


12 Days Of Limbo

by CallieB



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Groundhog Day(ish), Rumbelle Secret Santa, the character who dies doesn't necessarily stay dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:38:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8928565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallieB/pseuds/CallieB
Summary: She fucked up the interview, and now her ex-boyfriend is dead. It's not been the best Tuesday. If anyone could wish for a do-over, it would be Belle French.What she doesn't expect is to actually get one. And another. And another. It's not like she's racing against the clock; she may only have a single day, but she gets to live it over and over again, until she can figure out who keeps killing Adam Gold, and maybe why he broke her heart in the first place.Written for the prompt: big city, angst, winter, intense





	1. Day 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beauty_in_gold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beauty_in_gold/gifts).



> Happy Rumbelle Secret Santa beauty_in_gold! I hope this fills your prompt, and you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Lots of love, Santa!

Belle’s phone, unashamedly blaring out the _Harry Potter_ theme tune, woke her up. It was sat quite deliberately on the shelf next to the window, so that she had to actually get out of bed to turn off the alarm; Belle was by no means a morning person. Sighing, she smoothed down the front of her blue and white striped pyjamas as she reached to turn off the admittedly irritating noise; her phone was an old-fashioned Nokia, and as such even the most soulful music tended to come out as a garbled electronic mess.

Still, at least she was awake; today was an important one. She glanced out of the window; a weak ray of sunlight was just beginning to appear over the tops of the spidery trees in the little garden attached to the block of flats she was in. The news reporter yesterday had seemed to think it might snow today, although so far, despite the frozen grass and frosted windows of the cars below, there was no sign of actual snowfall.

Plucking her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door, Belle left her bedroom and made her way into the living room-cum-kitchen-cum-dining room that was the main body of the little flat that she and Ruby now shared. There was still a candle flickering on the mantelpiece above the television; Belle tutted under her breath as she blew it out, making a mental note to remind Ruby – yet again – about appropriate fire safety.

A groan from the sofa behind her told her that she wouldn’t have to wait long to do so. “Ruby?”

Her friend was lying sprawled on her stomach on the couch, her long dark hair tangled over her pale arms. At Belle’s call, she groaned again, pushing herself up slightly to look blearily up at Belle. “Belle?” Her head thudded back down to the cushion it had been resting on.

“How much did you have to drink last night?” Belle asked, with less sympathy in her voice than she might have shown three weeks ago. She had only just moved in with Ruby, but it was fast becoming clear that drinking herself to sleep on her numerous dates was something of a habit.

Ruby forced herself up into a sitting position. She looked terrible; make-up was smudged all over her face. “Theo… buying drinks…” she muttered. She looked up at Belle pathetically. “Water…”

Belle rolled her eyes, but put her dressing gown down on the coffee table anyway and went to fill a glass at the tap. “Which one’s Theo again?”

“Bartender,” Ruby said, holding her hand out for the water and drinking deeply.

“Hence the drinking,” Belle said drily. “Is he the creepy bartender or the married one?”

Ruby downed the drink, putting the glass on the coffee table. “Married,” she said, sounding much more like herself. “But he and his wife have been having troubles.”

“Troubles like him sleeping with other women?”

“Shut up,” Ruby groaned, head in hands. “I know I shouldn’t, okay? But…”

Belle sat down beside her and patted her knee. “I don’t understand why you don’t find someone nice to go out with.” It was a familiar argument, but Ruby didn’t say anything, so Belle took it to its conclusion. “Someone who isn’t married _or_ creepy, you know, who treats you well?”

“Yeah, I know,” Ruby said vaguely, resting her head on Belle’s shoulder. “You know how it is.”

Belle did know how it is. She’d known Ruby for five years, since they were both students; she was the first person Ruby told about Peter, her first love, who died in a car accident when he was seventeen. Ruby had never really managed to get over him, and Belle knew she was afraid of falling in love again. She patted her friend’s shoulder sympathetically.

“I have to shower,” she said. “It’s my interview today.”

“Fuck, yeah, I forgot!” Ruby said, lifting her head again. “Go and get ready, I’ll be able to wish you luck properly after I’ve had some coffee.”

She did wish Belle good luck a couple of hours later; they’d both showered, and Ruby was standing by the coffee maker in fresh pyjamas with her face scrubbed clean and her hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Belle was dressed in the interview outfit she laid out the night before: a black and purple dress, with a matching purple jacket and heels.

“Sexy,” Ruby said approvingly, which immediately made Belle anxious.

“Is it too much? Are my heels too high?”

“Oh, shut up, you know you look awesome,” Ruby said, giving her hug and a thermos of coffee, which just proved exactly why they’re best friends.

Belle met Ruby when they were both international students at UCL; she from Australia and Ruby from America. Belle had been to England before, but Ruby was overwhelmed and enchanted by London, and elected to stay on after their degree finished. Belle had considered doing the same, but after everything that happened in their final year, she ended up going home after she graduated. Five years later, however, her father died, and she realised she had nothing left to tie her to Australia. She missed London, missed the hustle and bustle of the city, and most of all missed Ruby, so she decided to come back. After all, she was older now; all the heartache that had kept her away before was in the past.

Now, she was fortunate enough to have been granted an interview by her own university, to work in the library. It would be a huge responsibility; university libraries follow rules of their own, and Belle was already feeling the weight of the role before she’d even attended the interview.

“You’ll be amazing,” Ruby said, as though reading her thoughts. Belle hugged her again, and left the flat.

The bus route followed the line of the river; Belle sat upstairs, her coat wrapped firmly around her, and watched a troupe of brave rowers pushing their canoes out onto the water. Teams of cyclists, not at all put off by the chilly weather, pedalled past the bus in skin-tight lycra; a few stray leaves drifted down from the otherwise empty trees. Belle smiled; she loved living here. A part of her almost wished that she’d never left.

She got off the bus at her stop, walking briskly to avoid the biting breeze that whipped around her legs. She was rehearsing the answers to the questions that she and Ruby had gone over together in her mind as she strode across the beautiful campus towards the library; although she always found the columns and arches of the university building magnificent, her head was too full to be paying too much attention to her surroundings.

“That’s never Belle French.” She stopped at the familiar cockney, whirling around in surprise.

“Will?” she said incredulously. He grinned mischievously at her; she smiled back. They had always been good friends at university. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Coffee with Ana,” he said promptly. “Give me a hug then, eh?”

She complied, wrapping her arms fondly around his leather-jacketed frame. She was trying to think who he meant by Ana; the only Ana she could remember from their time here was a rather snooty blonde girl a year ahead of them who always looked very disapproving of Will’s stream of pranks and practical jokes.

“Ana?” she said at last, unable to think of another.

Will cracked a smile. “Same one,” he said, obviously knowing exactly what she was thinking. “She teaches here now. Been together three years in February.”

“Wow,” Belle said, unable to picture it. “Congratulations.”

He laughed. “What are you doing here, then?”

She told him. “I’d better go,” she said. “I don’t want to be late.”

Will hugged her again, and she carried on walking towards the library, musing over the unlikeliness of Will’s relationship with Ana. Well, she supposed, people change; love, real love, can overcome even the most difficult of barriers.

At least, that’s what she’d always believed. Her own love story had turned out quite differently, but she was determined that her heartbreak wouldn’t stop her from believing in the possibility of love again in the future, the way Ruby’s had.

She looked at her watch; she still had a good forty minutes before her interview. She’d wanted to make sure she wasn’t late, but there would be no point in turning up this early. Perhaps she’d go to the café next to the library and get some breakfast. It wouldn’t do to have her stomach rumbling in the interview, anyway.

She ate her bacon roll without incident; it was still too early for most of the students to be up and about, unless they had an early morning lecture, so there was hardly any queue inside the café. She actually thought she saw Ana sitting at a table with a newspaper and a cup of coffee – presumably left over from her date with Will – but decided not to say hello; Ana probably wouldn’t even remember her.

At last, she left her table, throwing her wrapper into the bin as she passed by. She’d be at the interview just fifteen minutes early now – perfect timing. Her mind on the task ahead of her, and butterflies bubbling in the pit of her stomach, she wasn’t looking where she was going at all, and suddenly found her progress halted abruptly when she crashed into someone walking in the opposite direction.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was—” Belle stopped, the words cutting off in her mouth, as she realised just who she had bumped into.

This was what she’d been afraid of; the reason she’d almost not even applied for the job. Ruby had assured her that the university was so big that there’d be no chance of them running into each other; Belle supposed that it was just karma, after that kind of optimism, that she should see him now, on her very first day.

“Adam,” she breathed.

He had righted himself, adjusting the buttons of his jacket where she had knocked him. He was obviously taken aback to see her, as she was, but he was perfectly composed as he said quietly, “Belle.”

Adam Gold: once the love of her life. It had been five years since she had seen him, five years since he’d sent her away, but just looking at him now, it was as though no time had passed at all. He looked as good as ever; perhaps there were just a few more streaks of silver in his smooth shoulder-length hair, a few more lines on his thin expressive face, but she could see very little change apart from that. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a blue shirt and navy tie, his hands resting on the end of his customary gold-tipped cane, and he wore the same gold signet ring.

“I…” She was completely lost for words; never a good sign. His eyes… They were just the same as she remembered, the same warm buttery brown that she’d seen in her dreams.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was polite, but there was a roughness behind it that indicated that he wasn’t as unaffected by meeting her as he might like to pretend.

At last, Belle found her voice. “I have an interview,” she said shakily. “At the library.”

“Ah.” He inclined his head to her. “Good luck, dearie.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said fiercely. It was his distant voice, his sarcastic voice, the voice he’d only used with her right at the very end. “You don’t get to call me that.”

“My apologies,” he said, but he had a horrible false smirk on his face and she hated it. Her fists clenched angrily by her sides.

“You coward,” she said furiously. “You can’t even look at me. Drop the act, Adam, I can’t stand it.”

“I don’t know what you—”

“You know _exactly_ what I mean!” She resisted the urge to push him. Her anger certainly didn’t seem to be having the desired effect; rather than getting riled up, Adam looked like he was closing down even more. “Don’t do this. You – you cared about me once.”

It was as though shutters were coming down across his face; he was standing right next to her, but she felt so far away from him that she might as well be back in Australia. “You were a pleasant interlude, dearie,” he said coldly.

“ _Don’t_ —”

“Good luck with your interview, Miss French,” he interrupted. “I must go.”

And he did go, sweeping away without so much as a backward glance, leaving Belle trembling and on the edge of tears behind him. Her heart was pounding, and she felt weepy and lonely; certainly not the emotions she’d been expecting just before her interview, but she barely had ten minutes to get there on time now, so she dashed away the tears threatening to spill over with a hasty hand, hitching her handbag higher up on her shoulder, and started walking again.

Adam had, after all, always been infuriating, even in those brief shining moments when she’d thought they were happy together. Even now, she knew that his cruel words were lies – he’d loved her, she knew that, even if he tried to deny it in retrospect, and God, _fuck_ , she’d loved him too.

She managed to hold it all inside as she walked up the steps to the library, managed to keep her voice steady as she asked at the front desk for Alexandra Greenlowe, managed to walk without stumbling after the receptionist into the interview room.

Alexandra was there already, glasses pushed up her severe nose and hands folded in her lap. There was a man there that Belle didn’t recognise.

“This is Harold Pierce,” Alexandra said, gesturing to him. “He’ll be helping me to conduct your interview, Miss French.”

Belle burst into tears.

They were very nice about it, in the end; she tried to explain that she’d had a shock just before she’d come in, and Alexandra nodded almost sympathetically, and Harold Pierce, whoever he was, went to fetch her a glass of water. However, it was quite clear that in terms of the interview itself, Belle had blown it. Every time she tried to get a hold on herself, a fresh bout of sobs rushed through her, and eventually she had to concede defeat, crying herself out on Alexandra Greenlowe’s sofa.

At last, the tears dried up, and Belle excused herself as hastily as possible. It was evident that Alexandra and Harold were actually worried about her sanity, and possibly relieved to see the back of her; she wasn’t going to force her company on them any longer than she had to.

Adam fucking Gold. He’d ruined her five years ago, and now here he was, ruining her again.

She marched off campus as quickly as she possibly could, desperate to get as far as possible from the scene of her humiliation. She contemplated calling Ruby, but it wasn’t even eleven yet; Ruby was almost certainly sleeping off her hangover, and Belle didn’t want to disturb her. The trouble was, she had absolutely no idea what to do with herself. She certainly didn’t want to go home, and Ruby notwithstanding, she didn’t particularly want to talk to anyone either.

In the end, she went to the cinema and watched back-to-back films, stopping only to buy popcorn from the concessions stand. The staff looked at her somewhat sympathetically; she didn’t bother to explain what she was doing there in the middle of the day. Needless to say, she’d envisaged this afternoon going somewhat differently.

When she finally emerged, blinking in the frosty sunlight, it was to find that she had nine missed calls from Ruby; vaguely, she remembered a promise to update her as soon as the interview was over. Guiltily, she pressed the call button on her phone.

Ruby answered on the first ring. “Thank fuck! Where have you been? How did it go?”

“It didn’t,” Belle said, and burst into tears again.

It took around thirty seconds for Ruby to decide that she was taking Belle out to drown her sorrows. “Girls’ night,” she said firmly. “You need a cocktail.”

“It’s four in the afternoon!” Belle protested weakly, but Ruby was adamant.

“Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “I was there the first time with that bastard, remember?”

As Belle couldn’t exactly refute that, she didn’t say anything at all, and apparently Ruby took that as agreement. “I’ll text you the details,” she said. “Get on the bus.”

There’s really no point in arguing with Ruby when she gets in this kind of mood, so Belle didn’t bother. By half past four, she was sat in _The Rabbit Hole_ , a cosy little bar around the corner from their flat; it was tucked underground, with fairy lights all over the walls and little booths underneath low-hanging lampshades. Ruby insisted that they take one of the high round tables near the pool table, so that they could be right in the middle of all the action; Belle agreed, but drew the line at tequila shots.

“It’s not as though there’s a lot of action to be in the middle of, at this time in the afternoon,” she pointed out. Ruby just laughed and bought them both mojitos.

“Come on,” she said. She gave Belle a sideways look. “Take off your jacket and show off your arms, Belle. We’re going to get you laid.”

“I don’t _want_ to get laid,” Belle complained, but she took off her jacket anyway. Ruby was already dressed for a party, in a bright red lacy top that matched her lipstick.

She obviously wasn’t listening to Belle. “The work crowd will get here soon,” she said. “Mm, she’s cute, isn’t she?” She pointed across the room at a pretty blonde girl playing pool with someone who was definitely her boyfriend. Belle just shook her head.

However, by the time the work crowd _did_ turn up, Belle was pleasantly drunk, and well on the way to actually being able to laugh about her shamefully bad day. Ruby had plied her with overpriced cocktails that neither of them could really afford, and when they’d run out of money, she’d persuaded as many men as she could to buy drinks for them. Normally, Belle got rather strict about that sort of behaviour, but she was too buzzed to really notice.

Ruby was playing pool with the blonde girl, who didn’t seem to have noticed that her attention possibly went beyond that of drunk friendship, leaving Belle to sip her vodka and cranberry with the man who had bought it for her. She thought his name was Keith.

“So do you come here a lot, then?” he asked in possibly the least original manner possible.

Belle sucked on the end of her straw. “Yes, I live nearby,” she said. She waited for him to say something else; she had absolutely no inclination to make it easy for him.

“Who let grandpa into the bar?” Keith – if that was indeed his name – said scathingly. Belle looked up, following the direction of his gaze to the door.

It was like some strange dream, and Belle was almost awed by the absolute inevitability of it. In the end, she knew exactly who she would see standing there, even before their eyes met, because there was no way that their chance encounter at the university could be just that, simple chance. There was no way that the world could let it rest at that. It wasn’t chance. It was fate.

“Adam,” she said. She spoke too quietly for him to hear her, but she knew he saw her anyway. This was turning out to be one of the most surreal days of her life.

Keith looked back down at her. He was very tall. “What, you know him?”

She ignored him; Adam was moving determinedly through the crowds toward her, looking as suave as ever with his suit and cane. He came to a halt in front of her; Belle immediately wished that she were – what? More appropriately dressed? Less drunk? Anywhere but here? She didn’t know, but it was too late to change anything, because here he was.

“Belle,” he said. There was an urgency in his voice that surprised her. “I heard about the interview.”

Belle tried to push down the hot swell of shame that roiled in her stomach at the thought of the interview. She lifted her chin. “How did you know I was here?”

“Through Will,” he said impatiently, which made no sense at all, but he was already speaking again. “Belle – I needed to tell you—”

An awful, cracking _bang_ reverberated around the little bar, cutting him off. Belle jumped, cranberry juice slopping over the edge of her glass and down her dress; she put her drink on the table, looking wildly about to see where the noise had come from. People were starting to scream.

Adam was reaching for her; she turned her attention back to him, feeling slow and fuzzy. He stumbled, and suddenly his entire weight was crashing heavily into her lap, perched in the high chair.

“What the—” Keith, who was still inexplicably _there_ , began, and that’s when Belle saw it.

There was a patch of something dark and wet on the back of Adam’s jacket, right in the centre, a stain growing steadily larger as he crumpled on top of her. Belle was frozen, the only man she had ever truly loved lying prostate in her lap, and someone had shot him in the back.

“Adam,” she whispered. “Adam!”

“Someone call an ambulance!” Belle wasn’t sure who said it, but she couldn’t look away from that awful red stain.

He’d have to get it dry cleaned, and even then it might not come out; there was a hole there too, and this was one of his favourite suits. He’d hate that, he’d be so upset, and suddenly Belle realised that she was crying, because he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t saying anything about the hole in his suit.

She opened her mouth. “Someone help!” she screamed. “Please…” She looked down again at the prone form clutched in her lap. His body was slipping, and she couldn’t hold him. “Help him!”

“Belle?” It was Ruby. Half the bar had cleared, but her friend was still here, looking beautiful in her little lacy top. It was wrong that she looked so beautiful, when Adam was just lying here, when he was slipping and she couldn’t hold him.

“He’s not moving,” she whispered. “Ruby, he’s not moving!”

Ruby came towards her. “It’s okay, Belle,” she said. Her voice was oddly measured. “The ambulance is on its way.”

“No – you don’t understand—” She was clutching at the shoulders of his jacket, her forearms grazing that horrible wet patch and coming back red and sticky. “He’s not moving! He’s – you have to – _Ruby_ —”

“Belle,” Ruby said helplessly, but that was when he slipped completely out of her fingers.

His body went crashing to the ground, his head hitting the floor with a dull crack that made bile rise in Belle’s throat. His face was twisted at an odd angle, his eyes open and staring, and he just lay there, and he didn’t move.

Belle stood up uncertainly. “Adam,” she said, but there was no point. She could see it in the heaviness of his limbs, in the leaking blood still dripping down his back, in the glassy expression on his face. It was as though he was still looking at her, even in death.

She’d never know what he’d been about to say.

With a gasping, sobbing cry, Belle fainted.


	2. Day 2

The _Harry Potter_ theme tune woke her up. There was no reprieve, in which she didn’t remember what had happened; it was all there, immediately, and Belle found herself blinking away unshed tears. _Adam_. _Adam was dead. How could that be?_

She opened her eyes properly. How long had she been unconscious? Sitting up, she found that she was in her bedroom; why wasn’t she at the hospital? Why had Ruby brought her back here?

 _Because Adam didn’t go to the hospital_ , she told herself fiercely, although she couldn’t bear to believe it. _He’s dead._

Ruby had been more conscientious than normal, hanging up Belle’s clothes – her special interview outfit – on a hanger hooked over the edge of one of the wardrobe doors. Belle frowned; something didn’t feel quite right about that, but she couldn’t put her finger on. Wearily, she swung her legs out of bed, going over the shelf to turn off her alarm.

There was nothing to get up for, but Belle had never been the sort of person to languish in bed all day, and apparently even Adam’s death couldn’t change that. She choked back a sob; her Adam, the only love she’d ever had. She couldn’t stand it.

She took her dressing gown off the hook on the back of her bedroom door, pulling it on so slowly that it was almost five minutes later by the time she actually had the cord belted around her middle. What would be the point in doing anything quickly? It wouldn’t bring Adam back. It wouldn’t make him love her again.

Belle stepped out of her room into the living room; she was surprised to see Ruby lying on her stomach on the sofa. Had her friend been so concerned about her that she’d slept out here to keep an eye on her? Belle felt a little rush of affection for Ruby, and went to perch next to her on the sofa, touching her shoulder.

“Ruby?” she said. “Would you like some coffee?” Ruby was probably expecting her to burst into tears; she tried to keep her voice strong and steady.

Ruby stirred, groaning under her breath. She’d never been a morning person. “Theo?” she murmured sleepily.

Belle frowned. “No, it’s Belle,” she said. Who was Theo?

A cushion fell onto the floor with a gentle thump as Ruby rolled over. She looked _terrible_ ; her make-up was smudged all over her face, and there were pillow marks on her face and chest. The little blue dress she was wearing had ridden up too high on her thighs.

“Did you change?” Belle asked, confused, because surely Ruby had been wearing red last night? Her flatmate was almost acting as though she was hungover, which made no sense at all – seeing what had happened to Adam was surely enough to sober her up? She didn’t want to be angry, but something like dismay rolled through her, and she felt her eyes prickling with tears again. “Ruby?”

Ruby made an unpleasant sound. “What?” she huffed. She groaned pitifully. “I’m _sleeping_.”

Belle couldn’t help it; a tear spilled over her cheek, splashing down to her knee. “Why are you being like this?” she asked.

Ruby pushed herself up onto one elbow. “Belle?” she said, finally sounding concerned. “What happened? Are you crying?”

“How can you even ask that?” Belle said incredulously. More tears were rolling down her face. “After last night—”

Ruby made a disgusted sound. “Don’t talk to me about last night,” she groaned. “Theo made sangria. My head is _killing_ me.”

Belle stopped mid-sob. “What?”

“I know, I know,” Ruby went on blithely. “He’s married, he’s never going to leave her, blah blah blah.” She yawned widely. “I know I shouldn’t, but…”

“I know how it is,” Belle whispered. Her head was suddenly aching.

Ruby was behaving as though everything that had happened yesterday – the botched job interview, the bar, Adam – had never been. Had it been a dream? Belle looked down at her own trembling hands. As real as it had felt – the weight of Adam’s body in her arms – had it all been nothing more than some twisted machinations of her subconscious?

“Ruby,” she said slowly. “What day is it?”

Ruby frowned blearily. “Tuesday?” she said. She blinked suddenly. “Oh, shit, it’s your interview, right? Is that why you’re so worked up?” She struggled up into a sitting position, her tangled hair falling over her arms, and placed a hand on Belle’s knee. “Belle, you’re going to be amazing. You’re perfect for this job, you have nothing to worry about.”

Slowly, Belle felt her heartbeat begin to ease into a regular rhythm. A dream… It had felt so real, so tangible, like a memory, but none of it had happened. It was Tuesday. She hadn’t screwed up the interview.

“I had a dream,” she said hesitantly. “I messed everything up, and Adam—” She broke off, biting back a sob; even knowing that it hadn’t been real, it was horrifying.

“Don’t even think about that asshole,” Ruby said firmly. “Today is about you.”

And it did feel that way, the horrible dream fading into the back of Belle’s mind as she showered and dressed. Ruby even made her a cup of coffee before she left, looking distinctly less dishevelled after a hot shower. The bare trees were glistening with ice, leaves crunching underfoot as she made her way to the bus stop; Belle breathed in the crisp winter air, feeling oddly confident.

Whatever might happen today, she reasoned, it couldn’t possibly be worse than her disturbing dream.

She checked her watch as she made her way through the archway onto campus; she was ridiculously early, but she’d rather it was that way than be late. Perhaps she could get a cup of coffee and some breakfast at the café; she smiled to herself, remembering that that was exactly what she’d done in the dream. Even her own subconscious was efficient.

“That’s never Belle French.”

Belle stopped in her tracks, an unpleasant sense of déjà vu washing over her. She turned around. “Will?”

There he was, in his trademark leather jacket, grinning at her in that easy-going manner of his. Belle could only stare at him; was she psychic? Hadn’t this exact encounter happened in her dream the night before?

“Give me a hug, then,” he said, sounding slightly affronted, and Belle realised that she was just standing there, staring at him. She shook her head, smiling, and embraced him. “What are you doing here?” he asked as they drew apart.

“I have an interview at the library,” Belle replied slowly. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What about you?”

“Just had coffee with Ana,” he said, grinning.

Belle’s head was spinning. “That… How?”

Will laughed. “You remember her, then,” he said good-naturedly, although Belle wasn’t really listening. “Been together three years now,” he added with a wink.

“I have to go,” Belle whispered. Will frowned, looking concerned, but she waved him off; she felt slightly sick. What on earth was happening? Bumping into Will was one thing, but there was no way she could have guessed that he and Ana were together. They’d _hated_ Ana as students; she’d chalked that little fact up to the way dreams often subvert these things.

By the time she actually reached the café, however, she’d shaken off the odd feeling. Perhaps she’d heard about Will and Ana somehow, and forgotten about it until last night’s dream. She texted Ruby as she ate her bacon roll, to ask if her friend had known about it.

Ruby hadn’t texted back by the time Belle left, which wasn’t a surprise; she was almost certainly sleeping off her hangover after her wild night with Theo the philanderer. She rolled her eyes just thinking about it.

She was in such a good mood, in fact, that it actually took her by surprise, even after all the other odd things that had happened this morning. One moment she was marching briskly in the direction of the library, head full of interview questions, and the next…

“Adam,” she said faintly. He looked exactly the same, down to the expensive jacket that would definitely not survive a bloodstain, or at least not according to her subconscious. First Will, now Adam; this was getting ridiculous.

Adam looked just as affected; she wondered vaguely if he’d dreamt about her as well. “Belle,” he said softly.

Belle could feel her cheeks heating, her heart thudding almost painfully in her chest as she looked at the man she once loved. Still loved, if she was really honest about it, although she didn’t want to feel that way about him. After all, this was the man who broke her heart. She could still remember him, cold and forbidding as he stared her down on the day he ended their fledgling relationship.

She was rather impressed with her own composure as she said, “Good morning,” although there was still a slight tremor in her voice.

“Good morning,” he replied calmly. He frowned, and Belle saw his hand tremble just a little on his cane. “What are you doing here?”

“I have an interview,” she said. She couldn’t quite bring herself to stop searching his face for something, some clue that he was as shaken by their meeting as she was; his lovely familiar face, those warm expressive eyes, the curve of his mouth… it was all just as she remembered it, and unbidden, her dream floated into her mind. She shuddered at even the remembered horror of his inert body across her lap, and felt an unexpected gratitude that he was here and alive.

Adam was nodding. “At the library,” he said. He hesitated, looking awkward, which was so unusual for him that Belle found the corners of her mouth twitching. “Good luck, dearie” he said at last, that horrible coldness settling over his eyes.

The frisson of amusement died immediately. “I’ve asked you not to call me that,” Belle said as steadily as she could manage. Adam quirked his head to one side, and it occurred to her that she’d only asked him not to call her that in her dream, which of course he was to know nothing about. Still, he knew she hated it.

“My apologies,” he said, exactly the response he’d had in her dream, although this time his inflection felt less cruel; her self-possession was provoking politeness in him. She thought about how she’d reacted the first time; he’d always hated emotional outbursts and histrionics.

Not for the first time, Belle had to remind herself that the first time they’d had this conversation, she’d been dreaming.

“Thank you,” she said firmly. The awkward expression had returned to his face, but she decided she had better leave before anything else unusual could happen. “I must go,” she said, and then, with a grace that surprised even her: “It was nice running into you, Adam.”

“Belle,” he responded weakly. She smiled as graciously as she could manage, sweeping away with the feeling that she had triumphed in their brief interaction.

The final straw, in terms of her odd morning, came when she was summoned for her interview by Alexandra Greenlowe. Because how could she have known, subconsciously or otherwise, that she’d be accompanied by someone called Harold Pierce? She’d never met him before, never even heard his name, and yet here he was, and Belle was officially freaked out.

The interview certainly could have gone better – Belle kept staring at Harold Pierce, and answered several questions in a breathless squeak – but compared to the train wreck she had dreamed about, it was a success. Alexandra shook her hand at the end, and made some vague comment about being in touch, and before she knew it Belle was outside again.

She definitely needed to work out what was happening.

She sat down on a nearby park bench to try and think it through, shivering in the brisk wind. If it hadn’t been a dream – and she didn’t see how it could have been, really – then either she’d developed some kind of psychic ability overnight, or she was going completely mad.

ESP it was, then.

Part of her thought she should just let the whole thing go – it was so bizarre that it seemed laughable – but the researcher in her wanted to understand it properly. After all, where better to get to the bottom of her own psychology than at a university? And if she was very lucky, she knew the exact person who could help her figure it out.

Mind made up, Belle stood up and began walking towards the laboratories. Henry had been a lab assistant when she’d been at university; they’d been on one or two aborted dates, before realising how much better they were as friends. Just after Belle had graduated, he’d been taken on as a full-time laboratory researcher, and it stood to reason that he’d still be working at the university. After all, it had been his dream.

It would be nice to catch up with Henry again; he was another friend that she’d lost touch with when she fled England after everything with Adam. She knew he wouldn’t laugh at her when she told him what was happening. He’d always had a healthy appreciation for the kind of science that most people would have dismissed as being impossible.

When she reached his lab, looking through the little square window in the door, it was as though no time had passed at all since she’d last been here. There he was, little round glasses pushed up his nose, his white lab coat buttoned incorrectly. For a moment, Belle just watched him fondly as he scribbled busily in a notepad.

She pushed open the door, and Henry looked up; for a moment, he just stared at her. “Belle?” he said, his voice almost wondering.

Belle smiled broadly. “Henry!” she said. “It’s so good to see you.”

He moved around his bench, dropping his pencil on the worktop. “What are you doing here?”

She explained, for what felt like the thousandth time, about the interview, giving him a tight hug. “It’s good to be back,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

For a while, she didn’t bring up her strange dream; it was good just to catch up with an old friend, discussing how their lives had unwound over the intervening years. Henry was as self-deprecatingly funny as always, and Belle found all the tension of meeting Adam again drifting away as they talked.

It was over an hour later than Henry finally looked up at the clock on the wall. “Good God,” he said, blinking. “How on earth is _that_ the time?”

Belle giggled at his archaic way of speaking; it never failed to amuse her. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could bring you some lunch.”

“I can stop,” he assured her, and so she found herself walking alongside him to the staff canteen for a bowl of chicken soup and some warm bread. He’d done this before, she recalled; sneaked her into the staffrooms at the labs so that she could have a cheap meal with him.

“So,” she said, once they were sitting down across the table from one another. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Henry picked up his napkin, folding it in his hands as he looked seriously at her over the top of his glasses. “I thought you might have an ulterior motive,” he said.

“I would have come to see you anyway!” Belle protested, although she was smiling. “This just… reminded me of you, I suppose.”

He nodded at her. “Tell me,” he said.

She did tell him, as succinctly as she could; about the odd, too-real dream, the things that had happened in it that had then repeated themselves in real life, the things that she couldn’t have known that somehow she’d predicted.

“How could I have possibly guessed the name of the second interviewer?” she argued. “I didn’t even know there would _be_ a second interviewer.”

Henry listened to her without interrupting, and without laughing either, which reminded her of exactly why she had valued his friendship at university. When she had finished, he took off his glasses, frowning as he polished them with his napkin.

“And in the dream,” he said carefully, “in the dream, Gold died.”

Belle nodded. “Someone shot him.” She swallowed. “He died in my arms.”

Henry reached across the table and patted the back of her hand. “That must have been shocking,” he said quietly.

“It just felt so real,” she said. She looked up at him. “I know this sounds mad,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it. This is your area of expertise.”

“I don’t think it sounds mad,” Henry said thoughtfully. “This sort of thing isn’t unheard of, you know. Our ancestors believed that dreams were a prophecy of the future. A warning.”

“What do _you_ believe?” she asked.

He replaced his glasses on his nose. “I think that there’s too much out there to dismiss the idea out of hand,” he said.

“So you think the dream could be a prediction?” Her eyes widened as she considered the implications. “You think Adam could really be in danger?”

“Difficult to say,” Henry replied. His hands, she noticed, were trembling a little; he had always been a gentle sort of man. He couldn’t be enjoying the talk about death. “The question is, who killed him?”

“I don’t know.” The awful truth was, since she’d thought it was a dream anyway, Belle hadn’t even considered the question. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, it seems to me that if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time – perhaps a mugging gone wrong – then he’ll be fine as long as he avoids the area,” Henry said briskly. “If, on the other hand, he was deliberately killed – well, then, there could be some danger.” He smiled unexpectedly. “Or, of course, it really was just a dream, and today’s events have been a series of coincidences! I’m afraid I don’t have the most prosaic mind, you know.”

Belle smiled back at him. “That’s why I came to you,” she said. “Anyone else would just laugh at me.”

“I certainly won’t do that,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Part of me thinks I’m blowing something tiny out of proportion, but…”

“But a man’s life could hang in the balance,” Henry agreed. “Why don’t you check up on him? The worst that could happen is that you look a little foolish.”

“And I have my heart broken all over again,” Belle muttered gloomily. Henry didn’t know the full story of her past with Adam – only Ruby had that privilege – but he knew that things had ended badly.

He patted her hand again, looking sympathetic. “Well, potentially,” he agreed sombrely. “Still, you’re made of sturdy stuff, Belle French. I suspect you’ll manage.”

She laughed, cheered in spite of herself. “Thanks,” she said.

After they’d eaten and said goodbye, Belle made her way rather tentatively out of the science building and across campus. She knew where Adam would be; she’d been in his office countless times when they were still together. Her cheeks heated as she recalled some of the activities that they’d engaged in there – her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands running over her body, his mouth on her throat…

She shook off the memory, disliking the warm rush that even thinking about it gave her. She had no _right_ to be turned on by something that had happened so long ago.

After a few minutes of dithering, Belle decided that she was absolutely not going to be a coward about this. Henry was right; at worst, she’d look like an idiot, and Adam probably already thought she was an idiot already. At best, she could save his life, as improbable as that sounded.

Determinedly, she marched down the narrow corridor towards his office, with its neat unassuming plaque reading ADAM GOLD, PHD in careful lettering. Without letting herself think about it – or about what she’d do if he wasn’t here – she raised a hand and knocked smartly on the door.

A beat. Two. Then his quiet voice that still sent thrills down Belle’s spine: “Come in.”

She did.

For a moment or two, they just stared at each other. Adam obviously hadn’t expected to see her; he was sitting frozen behind his desk, his eyes fixed on her face and his mouth just slightly open. She wasn’t doing much better, standing in front of his door like a statue.

At last, he cleared his throat. “Belle,” he said. He swallowed. “I was… hoping that I might get a chance to see you again.”

“Yes,” she said stupidly. “I’m here.”

If he found it irritating or amusing to see her so tongue-tied, he kept it to himself, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. “Take a seat.”

God, the memories… The first time she’d met him, he’d told her the exact same thing, barely looking up from the assignments he was grading as she sat down. She was just a silly first-year then, barely on his radar, and he was her lecturer. It wasn’t until third year that she discovered that what she’d considered an ill-advised crush was reciprocated…

“How have you been?” she made herself say, just to take her mind off her own thoughts.

He regarded her thoughtfully. “Well, all things considered,” he said. He inclined his head. “And you?”

“My father died.” Why did she tell him that? He’d never even met her father, and it certainly had nothing to do with her current predicament.

Adam didn’t seem to mind her odd revelation. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sincerely.

It hurt so much, just seeing him sitting there so calmly while her heart was beating wildly in her chest. Perhaps she really _had_ been nothing more than a petty distraction to him – a pretty face to pass the time…

“I have to tell you something,” she said. It suddenly felt much more difficult to do this than it had with Henry; she’d known Henry would hear her out, at least. Adam might think she had gone mad – she didn’t think she could bear it. “It’s going to sound ridiculous.”

Adam narrowed his eyes at her. “Alright,” he said, his tone measured. “What is it, dearie?”

“Please _don’t_ ,” Belle said firmly, but Adam was already shaking his head.

“Force of habit,” he said, sounding angry with himself. “I apologise. Please continue.”

It was even harder to carry on when he was being so polite. She said, her voice stilted: “I had a dream about you last night. You died.”

Whatever he might have expected her to say, it clearly hadn’t been that. His eyebrows shot up to disappear in his hairline. “I see,” he said, in a tone that clearly indicated that he didn’t.

“I had a dream,” Belle ploughed on, “that I came here for my interview, and I met Will – do you remember Will? – on the way in, and he told me that he was in a relationship with Ana now.”

“He is,” Adam put in.

“Right, but how could I know that? I didn’t know that,” she said. “And then – in the dream – I saw you, and we… we talked.” She stopped abruptly, because it hadn’t really been so much talking as arguing. “Then I had my interview, but I screwed it up. And then… then later on you were in the bar with me and Ruby, and someone shot you.”

“It sounds a very unusual dream,” he said uncertainly.

“It felt real,” Belle said bluntly. “So much so that when I woke up, I was crying. I didn’t realise it had been a dream until I saw Ruby and she told me what day it was.”

“Ah,” he said. She found herself giving the ghost of a smile; he was obviously trying to keep up, even though he didn’t have a clue where she was going with this.

“And then,” she said significantly, “I came to campus, and I ran into Will, and we had the same conversation we’d had in the dream. And Ruby! Ruby was hungover this morning, and she fell asleep on the sofa just like I dreamt she had.”

“Surely not an uncommon occurrence,” Adam said drily. Belle ignored this; Adam and Ruby had never particularly warmed to one another.

“I thought it was just coincidence, even when I saw you in exactly the same place as I’d dreamed,” she said. “But then, in the interview, there was a second interviewer, and his name – Harold Pierce – I’d _dreamed_ that name. How could I have dreamt that?”

Now he was really staring at her. “So you came here—” He stopped.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she said, because she did know. “I don’t even really believe it myself. But everything else in the dream has happened in exactly the same way – the only thing that’s changed is _me_ – and in the dream—”

“In the dream, I died,” he finished for her. Belle nodded gratefully. “And you cried,” he added.

Belle frowned. “Of course I did,” she said. “Did you expect me to be happy about it?”

Adam shrugged the question away as though she hadn’t asked. “So you’re here to protect me,” he surmised. Belle’s heart sank at the amused twinkle in his eyes.

“I didn’t expect you to believe me,” she said, although she was surprised to find that it was a lie; she _had_ expected him to believe her, or at least hoped for it enough that realising he didn’t was crushing.

“Belle,” Adam said gently. “I believe that you had a dream. I’m just not sure what to do with the rest of it.”

“Neither am I,” she said. She let out a bitter laugh. “Trust me, if I ever envisaged seeing you again after all these years, this is _not_ the conversation I pictured us having.”

He looked startled at that. “What did… what did you want to talk about?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, Adam,” she said sarcastically. “Maybe why you threw me out that day? Why everything changed so suddenly? Maybe, God forbid, an apology?”

“You want an _apology_?” he repeated, sounding incredulous. For once, he seemed to have lost his impeccable calm. “For seeing through your act?”

Now Belle was entirely lost. “What act?” Her voice sounded small even to her.

His sudden burst of temper died down as quickly as it had arisen. “It’s alright, Belle,” he said wearily. “I know the truth.” He sighed. “Perhaps I was… cruel, when I challenged you. I was emotional, but I know that some of the things I said were unforgiveable.”

“I don’t understand,” Belle said. “Challenged me about what?”

“About your feelings for me,” he said, as though it ought to have been obvious. “As soon as I realised that they weren’t genuine—”

“Not _genuine_?” Belle repeated loudly. “You – how can you – not _genuine_?” She was on her feet, not quite sure how she got there. “How can you _say_ that?” she burst out. “Nothing could have been more… you… How can you—?”

Tears were streaking down her face; impatiently, she dashed them away with a hand. She’d put her handbag on the floor next to her chair, but now she snatched it up, turning and half-running out of his office. Adam didn’t move, a stricken expression on his ashen face.

She was moving so quickly that she barely knew where she was going until she found herself back at the bus stop, her clammy hands fumbling with her phone to call Ruby. Not genuine? He didn’t believe her feelings for him had been real? After all the heartache, all the tears she’d cried over him, _that_ was his response?

“Ruby?” she barked out as soon as her friend answered the phone. “I need a drink.”

“Belle? What’s the matter?”

“Adam Gold,” Belle forced out between gritted teeth.

Ruby, bless her, needed no more information than that. Within half an hour, Belle was at a familiar table at _The Rabbit Hole_ , pouring her heart out to her best friend over a cocktail, despite the fact that it was really too early to drink.

“Not genuine,” she said for perhaps the fiftieth time, taking a large sip of her Long Island Iced Tea. “That’s what he said, as calmly as if it was something we’d agreed on. Like it was obvious?”

“Asshole,” Ruby said companionably. She frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe it is, though.”

Belle was busy making sure she hadn’t missed a drop of her drink. “What is?”

“Obvious,” Ruby said. “To him, anyway. Maybe that’s what he really believes.”

“ _What_?” Belle all but shrieked. “How is that possible? How can you side with him?”

“Okay, calm down,” Ruby said, pushing her drink across the table at Belle. “Have some of that. I’m not siding with him, it’s just…”

Belle wasn’t particularly interested in what it was just. “I _loved_ him,” she said, waving her hands for emphasis. She took a sip of Ruby’s drink. “I told him I loved him, and he freaked out.”

“Well, exactly,” Ruby said. “How many people do you think say that to him? I mean, he’s grumpy, he’s old—”

“He’s not _that_ old,” Belle interjected.

“Whatever,” Ruby said flatly. “He’s not exactly fighting off hordes, that’s all I’m saying. Maybe he just couldn’t believe his luck. Like, _really_ couldn’t believe it.”

“Well, he _should_ be fighting off hordes,” Belle said petulantly, well aware that she was focusing on the wrong part of Ruby’s statement. “He’s beautiful.”

“Okay,” Ruby said, rolling her eyes as Belle finished off her cocktail. She jumped off her bar stool. “I’m going to get another round.”

Belle played moodily with her straw, thinking about what Ruby had said. It was certainly true that Adam hadn’t had a lot of love in his life before her. He’d never explicitly told her what had happened, but it was clear that his relationship with his ex-wife had been extremely bitter, and she knew that Milah had abandoned him for a younger man when their son was still a child. As for the son… She’d met Neal, once or twice, and while he was polite enough to his father, his manner was very guarded, and she’d had the impression both from that and from the odd comment Adam made that there had been some falling-out in the past that they were now trying to recover from.

Could it be as simple as that? Could Adam really be so unused to real love that he couldn’t believe it when it was right there in front of him?

It still showed a terrible lack of faith in her, though. She couldn’t forgive that so easily.

When Ruby returned, holding a pair of lurid turquoise drinks in her hands, her brow was creased in consternation. She wasn’t looking at Belle; she was staring at the door.

It was as inevitable as the tide. Belle turned around, her body trembling, and she _knew_ , because there he was, cane in hand, eyes on her.

“Adam, _get down_!” she screamed, startling Ruby so badly that she dropped one of the turquoise drinks, but it was too late. It was too late.

He hadn’t been allowed, this time, to get close enough to her to fall in her lap, and so when the shot came, he crashed straight to the floor. Not a word, not so much as a _sound_ ; just his body, hitting the ground with a terrible heavy thud, and the bloodstain spreading rapidly across the back of his jacket.

Belle, who had had a chance to save him, could only manage a single choked-out cry before everything went black.


	3. Day 3

She understood as soon as she heard her _Harry Potter_ ringtone.

Perhaps it ought to have taken longer for it to sink in, but somehow, striding out into the living room to see Ruby in the familiar position face-down on the couch, Belle felt as though she’d actually been dense not to have understood it before. In retrospect, it seemed obvious.

Still, it was a hypothesis that had to be tested. She didn’t bother waking Ruby up this time, moving quietly around the kitchen to make herself some coffee before her usual shower. She dressed in the purple interview outfit, still hung just as neatly as ever, and left the flat without Ruby stirring at all.

She felt numb as she sat on the chilly bus on the way to the university, although it had nothing to do with the weather outside. That was twice now that she’d had to watch him die.

Abstractly, Belle remembered what she’d said to Adam the day before – the time before – whenever it had been, in this litany of repeating days. _The only thing that’s changed is me_. Were all days like this? No one else seemed to be able to sense their passing. Had she somehow woken up from a repeating dream that everyone was a part of? Was nothing real?

She didn’t even blink when she saw Will walking towards her, whistling with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“That’s never—”

“Yes,” she said. She found that she was nearly in tears. “It’s me, but I have to go. I have to go.”

She left him staring after her, his usually bright eyes creased in confusion.

It was only habit, really, that had her buying the usual bacon roll; she was waiting, looking outside the café, to make sure that she didn’t miss him. After all, it was only a chance encounter; a few minutes either way, and he might be gone before she could get there. It was the only way she’d know for sure. She’d seen him die twice now.

At last, she made her way out of the café, walking more slowly now. As she turned the corner by the row of benches outside, there he was.

There he was.

Striding along, cane in hand, not perhaps jaunty but certainly nowhere close to death. His jacket – that jacket, that jacket that she’d seen ruined twice now—

He stopped as he saw her, his mouth falling slightly open, but Belle couldn’t summon the usual clenching around her heart at the sight of him.

“Belle,” he whispered.

And Belle, who had seen him die twice, who had watched blood pooling out of his inert body, who had failed to save him, who was doomed to repeat this day over and over again, collapsed in a dead faint.


	4. Day 4

When Belle woke up for the fourth time – she really had to stop fainting before she even had a chance to go to bed, it was getting embarrassing – she decided that today was a day to be reckless.

Perhaps Adam would die; perhaps he wouldn’t. She would have no way of knowing if she wasn’t there to witness it. After all, she’d never know if he’d died yesterday, since she’d apparently checked out of experiencing the rest of the day.

She showered briskly, deliberately ignoring the freshly ironed dress hanging on the wardrobe door, and threw on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt with some boots, because the weather was freezing and she was sick of feeling goosebumps pop up along her bare legs. And as for heels? Whose ridiculous idea was that when there was ice on every flat surface?

“Ruby!” She didn’t have time to let her friend wake up gently; she needed to get _out_ , to get away from this crazy dream that she was apparently stuck inside. She shook Ruby’s shoulder roughly. “Ruby, wake up.”

“Belle?” Ruby said blearily, pushing herself up onto her elbows. She sneezed. “What’s going on?”

“We have to go out,” Belle ordered. “Go and get in the shower, we’re going to be tourists today.”

It was a testament to just how hungover Ruby was that she obeyed without an argument, although she grumbled under her breath as Belle pushed her towards the bathroom. She felt fired up, ready for a day doing something _other_ than spending time with anyone she’d met at university. Other than Ruby, of course.

Ruby took altogether too long getting showered and dressed. Belle paced the apartment, unable to sit still for longer than a few minutes at a time. She tried watching television, but she couldn’t concentrate. The shower seemed to go on and on forever.

At last, however, Ruby emerged, in tight black jeans that Belle would never have been able to pull off and a low-cut red sweater. She’d blow-dried her hair, which just made Belle frustrated; she wanted to leave, and that seemed like a waste of time.

When she said this to Ruby, her friend raised her eyebrows. “Belle, I would literally get icicles in my hair in this weather,” she said. “Anyway, where are we going? Don’t you have your interview today?”

“They cancelled it,” Belle lied recklessly, picking up her coat from where she’d draped it ready across the back of the sofa.

“Bummer,” Ruby said, following suit. That was one of the reasons Belle loved Ruby; she had this amazing ability to simply go with the flow, no matter what happened. She knew that had it been the other way around, she would never have been able to just go along with Ruby without asking thousands of questions first.

They didn’t take the bus; Belle thought she’d had just about enough of London buses by now as it was. Instead they took the tube, pressing among the crowds of morning commuters as it rattled along the tracks into Central London. Ruby had by now woken up a little more, and the pair of them giggled like schoolgirls when the smooth female announcement informed them that this train’s final destination was Cockfosters.

“Did you see that old lady frowning at us in the corner?” Ruby said as they emerged at Covent Garden. She snorted. “What do they expect, calling it _Cockfosters_? God, I love this city.”

“I guess all the Londoners are used to it,” Belle said. She smiled, her breath misting in the cold air. “Come on!”

Belle had been to Covent Garden Market before, back when she was students, but she’d forgotten how much she enjoyed the swell of tourists, the hubbub of the crowds, the bustling, lively atmosphere. The fact that it was midweek didn’t dampen the number of people at all; the streets were _heaving_.

She and Ruby stopped to watch a street performer juggling seven silver bats, clapping with everyone else when his show culminated with some truly impressive fire-breathing. She took pictures with a gold-painted man who only moved when you put money in his upturned hat. Ruby started dancing in the middle of the street when they came across an Asian man playing violin, his case open in front of him, and Belle bought one of his CDs.

“Why don’t we do this more often?” she asked Ruby as they went into the square to look around the stalls. Ruby grinned at her, eyeing a table selling nothing but beautiful feathered dreamcatchers.

“Because we’re broke?” she suggested. She laughed. “No, this is fun. We should do it more.”

They had lunch at the restaurant up at the top, overlooking the entire Market. It was cold, but they had heaters on the balcony, and the view was beautiful even if the food was overpriced. Belle was putting everything that happened on her multiple repeated days to the back of her mind, focusing on just spending time with her friend, and it looked as though Ruby was enjoying the distraction as well. From some of the hints she dropped, it didn’t sound as though the date with Theo the philanderer had gone particularly well.

After lunch, they took a rickshaw to Southbank, which was one London tourist experience that Belle hadn’t had before. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed as much, rattling around in a little cart while the cyclist pulling them around weaved dangerously in and out of traffic along the river front. Ruby held her hand, her teeth flashing as their shoulders bumped together.

It wasn’t until they’d spent forty-five minutes queuing to go on the London Eye that she reluctantly let the events of the past few days filter back into her mind again. They were inside one of the pods, peering through the glass as it rose gently higher and higher over the city, and Ruby touched her elbow.

“So,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

Belle turned slightly. “What?”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Belle, I’ve had fun today, but I’m not stupid. I know when you’re avoiding something. What’s going on?”

All the other tourists were at the glass; Belle sighed, moving back to the bench in the middle of the pod and sitting down. She’d been on the London Eye before, anyway.

Ruby came to sit beside her. “Belle?”

“I’m still in love with Adam.” She surprised herself by saying it; it hadn’t exactly been what she’d meant to say, but that didn’t make it untrue.

“Belle—” Ruby sighed. “That guy is an asshole.”

“I know,” Belle said. “But I love him.”

Without warning, she felt Ruby’s arm slide around her shoulders. “I guess I’m not really one to talk about assholes,” she said. “Theo doesn’t even like me. He just gets off on the fact that I’m not his wife.”

“Adam thinks he’s so unloveable that he didn’t believe me when I said I loved him,” Belle said.

“Men are pigs,” Ruby said, nudging Belle’s shoulder.

“Agreed,” Belle said, and that was the end of the conversation.

After the London Eye, they went around the London Aquarium, sighing extensively at the entrance price, and then had dinner at the Slug and Lettuce outside Waterloo Station. It was gone eleven by the time they finally got the tube home, dragging themselves up the stairs because they’d had more than a few of the Happy Hour cocktails.

“Best day _ever_ ,” Belle panted as she flopped onto the sofa. “Again tomorrow?”

Ruby laughed. “I have work tomorrow,” she pointed out. “Back to the grind, you know?”

Belle thought about that as she was getting into bed, eyeing the interview outfit that was still hanging on the back of the wardrobe door. Back to the grind. She hadn’t seen Adam all day; she had no idea if he’d lived or died, but if the pattern continued, it wouldn’t matter by the time she woke up. She’d had a lovely day, escaping from everything with Ruby in London, but she couldn’t do it every day. She had to figure out why her days kept repeating like this.

She had the sneaking suspicion that it was related to Adam. Even now, just closing her eyes, she could see his body on the floor, heavy and motionless; she was fighting a rising panic even now, just thinking that he might have died and she hadn’t even been there. Maybe that was what she was supposed to do; maybe she had to figure out who was killing him.

Maybe she could stop it.

She remembered her own words again. _The only thing that’s changed is me_.

Could she change this? Could she stop Adam – the only man, even after everything, that she’d ever loved – from being killed?

It was that thought that carried her off into sleep.


	5. Day 5

The next morning – or the same morning, depending on how you looked at it – Belle barely even blinked as her phone went off the same as ever. She sailed through the flat, putting coffee on and waking Ruby with a steaming mug of it at her elbow.

“Whassat… Belle?” Ruby murmured, but Belle was already heading towards the bathroom. She had had a day off yesterday; today, she had to get back on the case. She had to figure out who was killing Adam, and maybe this time, she could stop him from dying.

Belle was a big believer in fate. There had to be a reason that this was happening to her; perhaps if she managed to save Adam, she’d wake up and it would be tomorrow.

She put on her interview outfit, although she wasn’t really sure that she should go to the interview. On the one hand, if she did save Adam and time started again as it was supposed to, she would want to have attended. On the other hand, however, his life was definitely more important than an hour or so of inane questions about how to deal with library problems.

It was somewhat interesting to watch the people on the bus; they were always the same, although she’d been too distracted to notice the first time it had repeated. There was that teenage girl with red frizzy hair texting with her nose an inch from the screen; there was the Hispanic woman with a pushchair doing her make-up with a compact mirror; there was the attractive man with dreadlocks winking at Belle over the top of his copy of _The Time-Traveller’s Wife_. She smiled back, feeling herself blushing in spite of herself.

It felt good to walk onto campus with a sense of _purpose_ , even though she still wasn’t sure what she should actually do. Adam hadn’t believed her when she’d confronted him, although she supposed there might be more diplomatic ways of persuading him to take the threat seriously. Henry, however, _had_ believed her, so perhaps going to him again would be a more sensible option. Another part of Belle just wanted to go to the police.

When she saw Will, she didn’t give him a chance to notice her, running up and launching herself into his arms.

“Will!” she exclaimed. “It’s so good to see you!”

“Belle?” he said, sounding bemused. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Belle said happily. “I’m back.”

They chatted for a few minutes, but she had places to be, so eventually she said goodbye, heading across the icy lawn to the café more out of habit than because she was actually hungry. Still, it didn’t seem right not to get her usual bacon roll.

Looking around the little collection of tables, Belle spotted Ana again; she vaguely remembered having seen her on that first day. Beautiful, blonde, and always in Belle’s memory rather above her surroundings, she was flicking disinterestedly through a newspaper in the corner.

Impulsively, Belle approached her, although even drawing near she felt nervous. Ana had never had time for Belle and Ruby’s antics, usually declaring them immature, although it had to be said that Will was normally a part of them too. She must have softened up at least a little.

“Ana?” she said as she reached the table.

Ana slowly lifted her fair head, the movement unconsciously regal. When she saw Belle, however, her imperious face melted into an unusual smile, wide and genuine. “Belle? Belle French!” she said, putting down her cup of coffee and standing up. Belle found herself, surprisingly, the recipient of a warm hug. “It’s so good to see you! Will will be so pleased!”

“I just saw him,” Belle said. “He said you were together.” She stopped, a little embarrassed.

“I bet you didn’t believe it,” Ana said. Her broad Cockney accent was far more pronounced than Belle remembered it; she’d always tried to cover it before with smooth, snooty tones. “Been three years, now.”

“He said,” Belle said, smiling. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thought you had your eye on him, once,” Ana told her frankly. “Mad jealous, I was!” She giggled unexpectedly. “Will soon set me straight.”

Belle found herself laughing. “You thought I liked _Will_?”

“Seems silly now,” Ana agreed. “Do you want to sit down?”

Belle looked at her watch. “I can’t,” she said, surprised to find that she was actually regretful that she couldn’t spend more time with a woman that she and Ruby had both so despised. “I have an interview at the library.”

“We could be working together!” Ana exclaimed. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Belle said, and Ana hugged her again before she left. She shook her head as she walked outside the café; she hadn’t intended to talk to Ana, but she certainly would never have expected such a warm welcome. Had that been why the other girl had always been so cold towards her – because she’d liked Will, and thought Belle was her competition? So strange, how things just diffused and lost their heat once you understood a person’s motivations.

She was so lost in thought that bumping into Adam actually managed to surprise her; she let out a little squeak, jumping back so that she didn’t knock over his cane. No matter how much she was expecting it, no matter how many times she saw him in that jacket with his hair just the same as ever and his beautiful face there in front of her, it always made her heart ache.

“Belle?” he said quietly, staring at her.

She couldn’t help herself; she smiled at him. “Adam,” she said. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said, a little uncertainly. He paused. “What are you doing here?”

“I have an interview at the library,” Belle said, for what felt like the thousandth time. She hesitated; she still hadn’t decided exactly what her strategy was, but it seemed that spending time with Adam was the most obvious way to go. “Do you… Would you like to have lunch with me, afterwards? We could catch up.”

His brow creased in consternation. “Belle…”

“I don’t… We don’t have to talk about – about the past,” she said hurriedly. “Just two old acquaintances, that’s all.” She bit her lip, and then said something that was true. “It would be nice to draw a line under all the bitterness.”

Something softened in his expression at that. “I agree,” he said quietly. He motioned to the café with his cane. “Here, or somewhere else?”

“Here is fine,” she said. “My interview is in ten minutes, so I expect I’ll be out in about an hour, perhaps an hour and fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be here,” he said. Belle smiled.

“See you soon.”

As she walked away, she realised that it was the first time he hadn’t called her dearie.

The interview itself was just as inane as ever; she thought she answered better than she had the last time, but that was probably because she knew which questions to anticipate. Much more of this, and she’d be so slick they’d _have_ to hire her. Not that she wanted any more days like this; she was hoping this would be the last time.

Once she’d been released, she walked quickly back to the café, hoping that she didn’t look as desperate as she felt. Obviously, seeing Adam die in front of her had sparked her protective feelings towards him, but it was more than that. Being around him after so many years was like a fix, and she was craving it. Craving his presence, contact with him, just to talk, just to see him smile at her… God, she loved him. She’d always love him.

He had reserved a table next to the window, and Belle’s heart flipped over as she remembered that it was the same table they’d sat at the first time they went for coffee together. She looked briefly to the corner where Ana had been, but the table was now occupied by a scruffy-looking student in a beanie hat falling asleep over his laptop.

Adam obviously saw her as soon as she came in, but he waited politely at the table as she went to get a sandwich and a cup of tea. When she finally approached, he stood awkwardly. “Belle,” he said in greeting.

“Hi,” she said. They sat down; Belle’s hands were shaking.

“I was a little surprised you wanted to see me,” Adam said hesitantly. She supposed that made sense; after all, for him, the last time she’d seen him was five years ago, when she’d told him that he’d lost her forever, that he was going to regret it.

“I’d like to leave the past behind me,” she said. That was certainly the truth, although much easier said than done.

He picked up his cup of what she suspected was hot chocolate, taking a careful sip. “Alright,” he said, although he still sounded wary.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Much the same,” he said automatically. She waited; it had always been like this with Adam, peeling back the layers, giving him time to open up. He sighed, putting his cup down again on the table top. “I have a grandson, now,” he said.

“Neal had a baby?” she asked. She felt her stomach lurch unpleasantly. “I didn’t realise he was with anyone.”

“He married,” Adam said shortly; Belle felt another nasty jolt. All this life, going on here in London, and she’d missed it. “Two years ago.”

“Tell me about her,” Belle said softly, and gently, little by little, he did.

He told her about Emma Swan, Neal’s fiery blonde wife who refused to give up her name, about their fast-paced romance that seemed to have centred around a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, although quite how Adam had never quite pieced together. He told her about their wedding, a quiet, intimate affair to which only a few close friends and family had been invited. He told her about their baby boy, born seven months ago, and his voice grew so soft as he described the child that Belle found herself smiling fondly.

Why hadn’t she been a part of all of this? If he could have only believed in her, believed in their love, she could have shared in his joy as a new grandfather. She could have been at Neal and Emma’s wedding. She _should_ have been there. She felt it deep in her bones.

“He sounds beautiful,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“Henry,” Adam said, which of course made Belle think of _her_ Henry. He had been so helpful before, even though he didn’t remember it; would he be just as good again? What if she brought Adam to him?

She couldn’t quite bring herself to interrupt their little moment of closure, however. “I’m so glad for you, Adam,” she said. “It sounds like you and Neal have worked through your differences.”

Adam smiled distantly. “It’s a slow process,” he said haltingly.

It was painful, being here with him with so many memories to weigh her down. That time, the first time they had met here, they hadn’t been together yet. It had been towards the end of her second year, when he wasn’t teaching her anymore, and he’d approached her specifically to congratulate her on a particularly well-written assignment that one of her colleagues had shared with him. She’d invited him to sit with her to discuss it, and a tradition was born that continued for several months before either of them took enough courage to take their relationship further.

It looked as though Adam might be thinking along the same lines, gazing around the little café with a slightly haunted expression in his eyes. Whatever he might pretend, he _had_ cared about her. There was no way he could be so affected if he hadn’t.

He cleared his throat. “What have you been doing, these last few years?”

“Oh, you know,” Belle said helplessly, spreading her hands. “I went back to Australia to be close to my father.”

“But you came back,” Adam said.

“He died,” she said shortly.

His face creased. “I’m sorry.” It was the second time she’d had to tell him, and the second time he’d responded with nothing but gentleness.

“I miss him,” she said slowly, “but I missed London, too. I’m glad to be back.”

Adam’s hand twitched; for a moment, she thought he might reach out, but then he stilled. “You must be glad you were able to spend these last years with him,” he said gently, although there was an edge of pain beneath his words that she didn’t miss. She wasn’t foolish enough not to understand him.

“In a way,” she said sadly. She hated herself for the tears prickling her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said, pushing her chair back. “I – I’ll be back. I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

She left her coat on the back of her chair in the hopes that it would reassure him that she really was coming back; she didn’t want that to be the end of their conversation. She couldn’t help it, though. Just thinking about those lost years, wasting away in Australia, made her want to bawl out loud.

Was part of her glad, that she’d had the time with her father? If things hadn’t ended so badly with Adam, she would never have moved back to Australia. But then… Maurice was her father, and she would always love him, always miss him, but he’d hated seeing her so unhappy. She knew that he would rather she had been away from him in London, happy with the man she loved, than living with him in Australia as haunted and miserable as she had been.

She reached the bathroom just in time, tears spilling over her cheeks in a flood. At least she had already had her interview this time. It was so frustrating that even the simplest of conversations with Adam could leave her so wrecked, so broken! It didn’t seem to matter how many times she did it, it always tore her apart.

She loved him. It felt as though it was killing her.

She didn’t know how long she spent, crying in the toilets of the university café. She knew Adam must be worrying about her, but she couldn’t go back out to face him until she was certain that she wouldn’t break down again, and it was a while before that seemed even remotely likely. She could only be glad that no one else came into the bathroom while she was there.

At last, she splashed her red face with water, neatening herself the best she could. It would probably still be obvious what she had been doing, but there wasn’t much she could do about that without her make-up bag with her. She blinked the last of the tears away, sucking in a deep breath.

She could do this. It wasn’t about loving him, anyway; it was about _saving_ him. It might hurt her more, because it was him, but she’d do it for anyone, if she could. No one deserved to die the way Adam had, twice now.

Finally, Belle pushed through the bathroom door, back into the café.

Just in time to hear the shot ring out through the room. Just in time to see Adam crumple to the floor where he sat, blood spattering from the hole in his chest against the glass behind him.

She didn’t faint this time. Didn’t scream, barely heard the panicked sounds of the students around her. She’d seen it too many times. Without a thought, without a word, with barely a breath, Belle lay down on the floor and closed her eyes.

_Sleep_ , she told her brain. _Sleep_.


	6. Day 6

Belle didn’t waste any time when she woke up the next day. Obviously, whatever she was doing wasn’t working. She hadn’t been able to save Adam. She’d thought that she had until the end of the day; clearly that was inaccurate.

She thought about what Henry had said to her. This seemed to prove that Adam’s death wasn’t merely a case of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time; this time, he’d been targeted at his workplace, by someone who knew where he would be. But who wanted him dead? That’s what she had to find out, and to do that, she needed to enlist the help of the professionals.

Now, it was just a question of whether or not they’d believe her.

She left Ruby sleeping it off on the sofa, dressing in her interview outfit more out of habit than because she actually intended on going. No, her destination was far more important than some silly job interview. She was beginning to wonder if there was something cursed about the library job anyway. After all, it was that which had started all this, wasn’t it?

The nearest police station was a large square block at the top of a flight of wide, shallow stone steps, with four ancient statues of lions on pedestals halfway up. Belle looked up at the comforting blue sign as she walked up the stairs; maybe she should have done this from the beginning. Who better to help her, than those who had committed themselves to helping _everybody_?

She pushed open the swing door and went into the station. The front room was smaller than it should be, given the size of the building; there was a line of steel chairs to her left against the window, some of which were occupied, and two windows in front of her, behind which sat a pair of police officers.

Belle didn’t waste any time, marching up to one of the windows. “Hi,” she said.

The man behind the window was typing something at his computer; he raised one finger, and Belle waited with growing impatience. Didn’t they understand her urgency? They were the _police_! Surely they were supposed to treat every customer as quickly as possible? Vaguely, she wondered if she should have called the emergency line instead.

At last, the officer looked up, folding his hands underneath his chin. “How can I help?” he said, sounding bored rather than actually interested.

“I need to report a crime,” Belle said. She sounded self-important even to herself. “Except… Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But I know it’s going to! Someone is going to die.”

“Mmhmm,” the police officer said. His attention was already back at his computer screen. “Your name, ma’am?”

“Belle French,” Belle said.

“Can you tell me any more about this crime?” he asked disinterestedly.

“It’s my… Well, his name is Adam Gold, and someone is going to shoot him,” she answered. His eyes flickered back up to her briefly; she wondered what he was looking for in her face. “Please, I need your help. We have to save him.”

“Okay,” he said. Nothing in his tone matched the panic and frustration Belle was feeling. “If you’ll just take a seat, ma’am, someone will be with you as soon as possible.”

“No – but – I need to see someone now!” Belle protested. “This is serious!”

“I’m sure it is, ma’am,” the police officer said, sounding anything but sure. “As I’ve said, someone will be with you as soon as they can.”

Aching with frustration, Belle went over to the line of chairs, sitting next to a heavily tattooed man with a panting dog on a chain. He was playing _Bejeweled_ on his phone. How long was she expected to wait here? Were the police so inured to the life-threatening situations they faced every day that they didn’t get emotional about any of them anymore?

She reassured herself with the thought that, no matter how horrible it was, she could always try again tomorrow, if this course of action failed. She wasn’t going to let this defeat her, even though despair was threatening to crash through her. She _would_ save Adam, one way or another.

It was more than an hour before anyone actually _did_ come for her. Belle had checked her watch, agonisingly, over and over again, watching as other people were called through the single door next to the windows by various police officers. Some of them had even arrived after her, but when she addressed this with the man behind the window, he told her impassively that they had had appointments.

At last – _at last_ – the little door opened again, and a woman stood there in a neat dark blue uniform. She had unruly dark curls bundled into a coiled braid over one shoulder, and her blue eyes were sharp and bright. When she called Belle’s name, Belle couldn’t help feeling relieved.

“That’s me!” she said, jumping up at once. As she walked past the windows, she could have sworn she saw the man she had spoken to rolling his eyes.

“Sergeant Gale,” the woman said, extending a hand. Belle shook it; Sergeant Gale’s grip was firm and brisk. “Shall we?”

Belle was led through a narrow, badly carpeted corridor and into a small interview room. She could tell it was an interview room, because there was a large white camera in one corner, and a tape recorder on the square table. She had, largely due to the regular _Brookyln Nine Nine_ sessions she and Ruby often shared, rather been expecting a two-way mirror on the wall, but then she supposed very few things were exactly as they were on television. Besides, she wasn’t being interrogated.

“Constable Higgins tells me you’re here to report a crime.” Sergeant Gale’s voice was kind, but there was steel behind it that made Belle feel infinitely reassured. This was not someone who would give her false platitudes. If she didn’t believe her, she’d say so right away.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” Belle said hesitantly. Gale motioned for her to sit down at the table, and she sank gratefully into a chair. “But I swear it’s the truth.”

“Try me,” Gale said.

Belle had been wrestling with this, in the time she’d spent sat in the police waiting room. Should she tell the police about her constant repetitions of the same day? They’d think she was mad, but then again, how else could she explain what she knew? Besides, she didn’t do very well with lying. In the end, she decided to lay all her cards on the table. If it didn’t work out – well, she’d have infinite chances to try again.

So she told Sergeant Gale everything. Told her about waking up on the same day every morning, about seeing Will, seeing Adam, the interview, the bar, the shooting – everything. All the while, Gale sat back in her chair, arms folded, listening without speaking. Belle had been expecting interruptions, but it seemed that the sergeant was at least prepared to hear her out.

At last, her words trailed off; Belle realised self-consciously that she was sweating a little. “And… that’s all,” she finished lamely. “I know it sounds crazy—”

“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Sergeant Gale said, to Belle’s surprise. She had a nice voice. She gave Belle a measured look. “It sounds, perhaps, as though you know things you shouldn’t. Perhaps you’re worried about getting into trouble. Maybe you’re trying to think of an innocent explanation for the things you know.”

Belle frowned, confused. “I don’t understand.”

Gale shrugged. “All I’m saying is that if there was _more_ to the story—” She laid stress on the word _more_ , as though Belle was supposed to infer some meaning from it. “—then you could tell me. You wouldn’t have to worry about what might happen.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Belle said, nonplussed.

The sergeant leaned forward a little. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. So, the upshot of what you’re telling me is that a man is going to die, and you need me to protect him, yes?”

“Yes!” Belle said gratefully. “Oh God, please. You have to save him.”

“Right, then,” Gale said. “I can see that this is important to you, Belle – is it alright if I call you Belle? – but you see, I have a problem.”

“You don’t believe me,” Belle said, heart sinking. She should have known this wouldn’t work.

Gale spread her hands. “Belle, it’s not about whether or not I believe you,” she said, and she sounded genuinely sympathetic. “We get attention-seekers in here every day. If I’m being really honest with you, you’re one of the sanest I’ve ever met. I can tell you believe what you’re saying. But if I go out on a limb here, and I get hauled in front of my superiors – what am I going to tell them? What is it about you that makes you different from everyone else who turns up here with a crazy story and a single marble rolling around upstairs?”

“How could I prove it to you?” Belle asked hopelessly. Then, unexpectedly, she felt a little _less_ hopeless, because her own words had inspired her, just a little. “What if I had come here, knowing all about you?” she said. “What if I knew – I don’t know, knew things about you that no one knows? That only you could have told me?”

Sergeant Gale clearly hadn’t been expecting that. “What kind of things?” she said cautiously.

“Things that you’re going to tell me right now,” Belle said confidently. “Tell me something that _no one_ knows. Something I couldn’t have found out in any other way.”

“Why?” Gale’s eyes narrowed at her. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to come back,” Belle promised. “I’m going to come back, and tomorrow, you’re going to believe me.”


	7. Day 7

When Belle strode into the police station the next morning, she didn’t waste any time with Constable Higgins and his dull eyes, going straight to the other window. The red-headed woman behind it seemed marginally more switched on.

“I need to see Sergeant Gale,” she said.

The woman, at least, responded to her straight away. “Is she expecting you?”

“No,” Belle said. “But I have important information for her regarding a crime – a murder – that’s about to be committed.”

She had thought that this statement would give her instant access to the back rooms of the station, but to her surprise she was mistaken. The police officer dutifully took down her name, and once more Belle found herself sitting on the steel chairs next to the man with the dog.

She was feeling a lot less despairing than she had the last time she was sitting here; this time, she actually had a plan, and it felt like it could really work. She’d been floundering around for so long, watching Adam die over and over again, and now she actually had a way of saving him. Maybe, just maybe, today could be the last day of this; maybe tomorrow when she woke up, she would actually be in tomorrow.

This time, it was around forty-five minutes before Sergeant Gale came for her. She shook Belle’s hand with a brief introduction; it was all Belle could do not to burst out with her information at once, but she contained herself until they were in the same little interview room as they had been the day before. Belle sat down without being invited, keen to get started; Gale eyed her warily as she sat down across the table.

“Sergeant Jeffries tells me you’re here to report a crime,” she said.

“Yes,” Belle replied, and launched into her tale.

She’d practised it on the way over, so it was much more polished than it had been the last time she’d had to tell it. She watched as Gale’s eyes widened, but still the police officer listened to her, arms folded across her chest.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Belle said, once she’d finally finished and the sergeant was opening her mouth to speak. She shut it again, and Belle said: “You’re going to say that you get attention-seekers like me here every day, although I’m one of the saner ones you’ve seen. You’re going to ask me how I expect you to explain this to your superiors, what makes me different from the rest.”

Gale narrowed her eyes. “Okay,” she said slowly.

Belle pushed on eagerly. “I know that because I was here yesterday,” she said. “Except, well. It was today, again. And we had this conversation, and you said those things.”

“Did I,” Gale said with an inflection that made it clear it wasn’t a question.

“I know things,” Belle pressed. “I can tell you things. I can answer any question you ask. Things I couldn’t possibly know.”

The sergeant leaned forward. “What kind of things?”

Belle swallowed. “I know your first name is Dorothy,” she said. “I know you had a dog called Toto when you were little. I know you—” She broke off, wetting her lips; Dorothy Gale was staring at her wide-eyed. “I know you’re a lesbian, but you’ve never had a girlfriend because the job is too demanding,” she said quietly. “I know you wanted to be a police officer ever since your parents died when you were young. I know – I know who killed them.”

Dorothy – knowing so many intimate things about the woman made Belle feel as though they were on first-name terms already – looked as though she had seen a ghost. Her face was drained of colour, her eyes glassy and her mouth hanging open. At last, she croaked: “How… _How_?”

“You told me,” Belle said. “I asked you to tell me something personal. Something I couldn’t have found out any other way. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be something like this.”

Dorothy swallowed. “Tell me, then,” she said quietly. “Who killed my parents?”

Belle was itching to put a comforting hand on Dorothy’s arm. “Her name was Zelena West,” she said.

“And do you know what happened to her?” There was that ring of steel again; Dorothy’s face was taut and rigid.

“She fell,” Belle said. “That’s all you told me.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Dorothy said in a hard voice. “I led a raid against her when we finally had enough evidence to convict her. Not of my parents’ murders – no one knew about my connection to her, or I wouldn’t have been authorised to make the arrest – but she’d raped her sister’s husband and then attacked her sister when she confronted her.”

Belle’s hands flew to her mouth. “That’s awful,” she breathed.

Dorothy didn’t appear to have heard her. “We went up to her apartment building. She must have heard us; she was trying to get out down the fire escape. I ran out as she was climbing down the ladder.” Her eyes stared at something that Belle couldn’t see, distant and terrible. “She looked up – and saw me.” Something hard and angry entered Dorothy’s voice. “She recognised me, and she laughed. Laughed to see me chasing her, one step behind as I’d always been.”

“What happened?” Belle’s voice was very small.

Now, at last, Dorothy looked over to her. “She lost her footing on a broken rung of the ladder,” she said. “I distracted her, and she wasn’t looking where she was going. She fell.”

“I’m sorry,” Belle said, although she wasn’t quite sure which part she was apologising for. Dorothy’s mouth was set in a grim line.

She sighed. “What is it you want me to do?” she asked.

Belle’s heart, despite the sad story, leapt. “You believe me?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Dorothy said guardedly. “Let’s just say I’m intrigued. Intrigued enough to take a look. If your story checks out – well, maybe then I’ll consider getting involved.”

“Thank you,” Belle breathed. “Thank God.”

Apparently the slow, misty-eyed moment was over; Dorothy was all business again, clasping her hands on the table in front of her and getting Belle to tell her strange story again. This time, she asked detailed questions, pressing Belle for details about what had happened, whom she had seen, what times everything had occurred. Belle tried to remember as much as she could; it was difficult, because she was itching to _move_ , to do something, but she knew that being here was the best way she had of helping Adam.

Every now and then, Dorothy shook her head almost wonderingly. “I don’t really know why I’m still listening,” she said when Belle had answered the myriad questions to the best of her ability.

“You believe me,” Belle said confidently. It was obvious now, despite her earlier misgivings, that Dorothy was an unwilling believer.

“God help me,” Dorothy muttered. Belle didn’t think she’d meant to say it loud enough to be heard. She cleared her throat. “Okay, Belle,” she said. “For whatever reason, I think there might be something in what you’re saying. So the question is, who would want your boyfriend dead? Because if what you’re saying is true, someone must.”

Truth be told, Belle hadn’t wanted to think about that, but she hadn’t been able to stop her mind from lingering on the problem. The trouble was, she hadn’t come up with much in the way of answers.

“I don’t know,” she said, annoyed at herself for having to admit it. “I’ve been wracking my brains, but I can’t think of anyone! There are people who don’t like him – he can be difficult, I guess – but not so much that they’d want to kill him.”

“Would he say the same?” Dorothy asked. Belle frowned.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I’d like to think so, but… I haven’t seen him in five years. Things could have happened that I don’t know about.”

“I see,” Dorothy said with a chilly smile. With dread, Belle realised that she’d hidden that brief spark of belief behind a mask once again; no longer Dorothy, but Sergeant Gale. “Well, Belle, you know I’d love to help, but—”

“What if I come back here again? After I talk to him?” she interrupted hastily. “I could find out if he has any enemies.”

Dorothy sighed. “Belle—”

“Please!” Belle said desperately. She forced her breathing to steady; belatedly, she realised she was standing up, both hands on the table, and swiftly sat down again. “Please,” she repeated more quietly. “Please help me save him.”

There was a long, lingering silence. Then, at last, Dorothy said: “Fine.” Belle grinned in relief; Dorothy raised a finger. “I’ll give you an hour,” she said. “We’ll go to see him, and if he can think of any reason for someone to want him dead, I’ll look into it, But if not…”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence, but Belle was hardly listening in any case, full of relief that finally, _finally_ someone was taking her seriously. She had been so close to losing her mind; repeating the same day, over and over, with no one to talk to, no one who remembered except for herself, infinite reimaginings of the same grisly event.

Dorothy drove her to the university in a police car, which unaccountably made Belle giggle. A little, schoolgirl part of her wanted to put the sirens on, just to see what it felt like to have the traffic part in front of her, but she didn’t ask, and Dorothy certainly didn’t offer. Her heart was beating, faster and faster, as they approached, parking with some difficulty in a disabled space just outside campus.

Belle looked at her watch; it was nearly half past three already. She and Dorothy had been talking for hours.

“He’ll be in his office, I think,” she said. Dorothy just mumbled noncommittally under her breath.

Belle strode confidently across the chilled lawn outside the main building. She wasn’t expecting to see anyone she knew, as it was well past her usual time, but to her surprise she saw Henry shuffling along the path in front of her.

“Henry!” she called impulsively. His head whipped around.

“Belle?” he said, his eyes widening in surprise. Dorothy coughed, and Belle remembered herself.

“It’s me, I’m back,” she said. “I can’t stop now, Henry, but can we catch up later?”

Henry blinked at her. “Oh. Alright, then.” He frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t stop!” she said. “I’ll find you in your lab, alright.”

He nodded, although he still looked bemused. “Um, until then, I suppose,” he said.

“Who was that?” Dorothy asked, as soon as they were earshot. Belle explained about Henry, about how of everyone, he had believed her. He had believed that the impossible could be possible.

Dorothy’s brows took on a low, pensive line, and her lips pinched together, but she didn’t say anything. Belle wondered if knowing that Henry had once believed her made her impossible story seem more or less likely.

She was practically skipping by the time they found themselves outside Adam’s office, although even in this moment of almost-triumph she recognised that it was a completely inappropriate reaction. She hadn’t forgotten the way he affected her; her heart was pounding, and the blood was rushing in her ears. Hesitantly, she raised her hand to knock on the door.

“One chance,” Dorothy warned her, her eyes serious. Belle nodded, rapping her knuckles against the thick wood.

There was a brief pause, during which Belle’s stomach managed to completely flip over, and then a quiet, even voice said: “Come in.”

Slowly, Belle pushed open the door.

Adam was sitting at his desk, looking over what looked to be some poor soul’s assignment spread across the work surface. He was wielding a red biro in a decidedly wicked sort of way. When he looked up, however, and his eyes found Belle’s face, the pen slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the floor.

Belle remembered, suddenly, that today’s Adam hadn’t bumped into her this morning. He would have no idea that she was back in London.

The colour had drained from his face; he seemed to be working his mouth, trying to get it to operate properly. He croaked: “Belle?”

Belle bit her lip against the sudden, predictable rush of tears. “Hi,” she said quietly. Dorothy coughed behind her, and she flinched. “Sorry. This is Dorothy Gale, Adam.”

Dorothy strode forwards, obviously feeling none of the trepidation creeping into Belle’s heart. “Sergeant Gale,” she corrected, extending a hand. “A pleasure, sir.”

Adam frowned, his eyes still questioningly on Belle’s face as he shook Dorothy’ hand slowly. “Sergeant,” he said warily. His gaze flickered between the two women. “How can I help?”

Now Dorothy was looking at Belle too. “Doesn’t he know?” she said.

“I came straight to you!” Belle protested, feeling herself flush uncharacteristically. “I told him on a different today.” Dorothy frowned at her.

“Much as I enjoy being discussed as though I’m not in the room,” Adam interrupted acerbically, “I’d like to inquire exactly what is going on here.”

Belle moved forwards almost unconsciously; it wasn’t until he shied away from her hand on his shoulder that she realised she’d touched him at all. She blushed again. “Adam,” she said as gently as she could. “You’re in danger.”

“Belle here has been at the station telling a very unusual tale,” Dorothy said. Adam’s attention moved carefully between them.

“That sounds like Belle,” he said cautiously.

“Is there anyone that could want you dead?” Belle asked in a rush. She probably ought to have said it differently, phrased it in a better way, but she’d waited too long for this. She needed to know.

Adam’s frown deepened. “Is this some kind of joke, dearie?” His voice was deceptively soft.

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Dorothy muttered.

“No!” Belle exclaimed. “I’m serious.”

“After five years…” he murmured. He blinked, and then looked up at her. “I think I’d like the pair of you to leave now.”

“What?” Belle squawked. “We can’t leave! Adam, I mean it, there’s danger. Someone wants to kill you, and we need to find out who!”

But when she looked at him, she could tell that her words were falling on deaf ears. Adam stared at her with that impassive flat face that she had always hated so much, the one that meant he had closed down on the inside.

“I’ve heard enough, dearie,” he said coldly. His attention switched to Dorothy. “Am I under any obligation to speak to you?”

She shook her head, and Belle wanted to weep with despair. “No, sir,” she said respectfully.

“Goodbye, Belle,” Adam said, and somehow that was it. They were standing on the other side of his office door, and she distinctly heard the click that told her he had locked them out.

At once, she turned to Dorothy. “You have to _make_ him talk to you!” she said desperately.

Dorothy looked pained. “I can’t, Belle,” she said. “I told you, you had one shot.”

“And I blew it,” Belle whispered.

Dorothy sighed. “Can I take you home?”

That was it. Belle burst into long, shuddering sobs, that wracked her body and sent tears cascading down her cheeks. She’d tried so hard to hold this off – and it wasn’t Dorothy’s fault, she had already taken more of a chance on Belle than she should. She was just doing her job. Oddly enough, she had the strange sensation that Ruby would like her.

“I can’t save him,” she wept. “I can’t save him.”

Dorothy didn’t leave her, which was nice. But Belle sat slumped against the wall outside Adam’s office for a long, long time, crying noisy tears that he must have been able to hear, yet in all that time, he didn’t come out.

That hurt worse than her own failure.


	8. Day 8

Belle woke up. She had a brief, dizzying moment when she remembered what had happened yesterday – another today – and a dreadful one when she remembered the conclusion she had drawn.

There was no other way. She couldn’t continue to live like this. Not when Adam’s life was on the line.

There were sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet, in a little white box with Ruby’s name printed on it. She still took them on and off, whenever the memory of Peter kept her up at night. Belle gathered up the packet, getting a glass of water from the kitchen.

She lay in bed. On the off-chance that any of this was real, she didn’t want Ruby to find her slumped on the bathroom floor. Her flatmate, and best friend in all the world, was still unconscious on the sofa; Belle had stroked her hair briefly as she passed, but decided against leaving a note. What could she possibly say that Ruby would understand, anyway?

Maybe this was all an elaborate dream, like in the movie _Inception_ ; maybe dying was the only way to wake up, to get back to her normal life. Maybe it wasn’t, and she’d really, truly be dead. Either way, she didn’t much care.

She popped the pills from their protective foil wrapper. There were fourteen of them.

More than enough.

One by one, Belle slipped the little, innocent white pills into her mouth, taking a sip of water to swallow each one. She put the glass and the empty wrapper on her bedside table and lay back, closing her eyes.

Sleep came sooner than it should have.


	9. Day 9

The _Harry Potter_ ringtone, of which she was heartily sick, woke her up.

Had it worked? It was hard to tell, as Belle hadn’t disturbed anything in her room when she took the pills. When she went out into the living room, however, her heart sank. Ruby was lying there on the sofa as ever.

She hadn’t woken herself up out of this nightmare. And apparently, even if she died, she wasn’t going anywhere.

Belle looked at the clock on the mantelpiece above the television; it was just after seven. Usually, she took at least an hour or so to get herself ready for her interview. Today, however, she had something else in mind.

It was obviously back to the drawing board, and that meant she needed to find out who could possibly want Adam dead. He’d thrown her unceremoniously out of his office the last time she’d tried, but she’d gone in guns blazing then, a police officer in tow. This time, she thought, she’d take a gentler approach. After all, their brief conversation in the university café had been going alright, before someone had killed him.

Mind made up, Belle showered and dressed at top speed, not bothering to wash her hair or apply any make-up. She took her little bag with her to do on the bus. It was twenty to eight when she left the flat, Ruby still dead to the world on the sofa.

She wanted to catch Adam before he left for work; any conversation would be much easier if they could be alone together in his house, with no obligations to anything but each other. She knew, of course, that it would be difficult. Part of the reason she’d brought her make-up with her was for emergency applications if she cried again. But his life was on the line, and she couldn’t afford to be weak anymore. Besides, if he was safe at home, there was no one but her to pose any danger to him.

As Belle rounded the corner onto Adam’s street, she saw him coming out of his salmon-pink house, turning to close the front door behind him, and her heart flipped over. It wouldn’t matter how often she saw him; she would always have the same reaction. Love, and not a little grief.

“Adam!” she called, striding a little faster to catch him as he walked down his little garden path, leaning on his cane. He looked up at the sound of his name, and stopped dead at the sight of her, his mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.

“Belle?” he whispered. Belle was at the gate now, pushing it open and coming to stand in front of him.

“Adam,” she sighed, like it was an answer to something. And maybe it was.

For a moment, they just stood there, looking at each other. His soft brown eyes seemed to be drinking her in, flickering all over her as though they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Belle had to resist the urge to touch his face.

“Adam,” she said again, when the silence had dragged on for too long. “Can we talk?”

He stared at her. “Belle… What are you doing here?”

She managed to smile, although she knew it was a weak gesture. “I’m back,” she said. “I wanted to see you. I want…” She searched for the right word. “Closure. To draw a line under the past.” She knew she’d said something similar the last time they had spoken; that didn’t stop it from being any more true this time.

Adam’s face softened. “That would be nice,” he said quietly.

“So can we talk? Please?” Belle pressed.

She could see him hesitating. “I’m supposed to be at work…”

“Take the day off,” she urged. “Just for today, let’s just _talk_. Let’s find some peace.”

She almost wasn’t expecting him to agree; he must have been able to hear the desperation in her voice, but to her surprise he nodded jerkily, and slowly began to turn around. Belle couldn’t help but smile in relief as she followed him back up the path, waiting behind him as he unlocked the door.

God, she loved him.

When they were inside, Adam murmured something about making a pot of tea, so Belle went through into the living room to wait for him. It was as warm and homely as she remembered, with worn brown leather couches in front of a fireplace, and a wall of glass-fronted bookshelves going from floor to ceiling. She wandered along in front of them, wondering if Adam had bought any new books to add to his collection. He must have, in the last five years. Belle had spent hours curled up in this very room, reading some book or another while Adam marked assignments at the desk by the window and a fire flickered in the grate.

It was like thinking back to another life.

When Adam came back in, balancing a tray on his arm with the old blue and white china tea set on it that Belle remembered so well, she had to discreetly dab a tear or two away from her eyes. At least she wasn’t breaking down as she had before; she felt as though she’d cried more tears in these last few days than in her whole life.

She was grateful for the plate of biscuits that was on the tray, as well; she hadn’t stopped to eat breakfast that morning, and she was hungry. For a few minutes, they sat on opposing sofas in companionable silence, stirring tea and dunking biscuits in it.

At last, Adam said: “What brings you here, Belle?”

Belle wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to say. She found her tongue, however, and managed: “I want to know about your life.”

He blinked at her. “Why?” he said. She could tell it had been a genuine question.

“Because I should have been in it.” She closed her mouth with a snap. She hadn’t meant to say that.

Adam’s mouth was hanging open, his eyes crinkled and incredulous. She could see the shutters beginning to fall; he didn’t believe her. She could _see_ it. How had she missed it before? “Belle…” he began.

“No, wait,” she said hastily, before he could talk himself into believing she wasn’t telling the truth. “Adam… I don’t want to be angry with you anymore. I was, for so long, and because of that I couldn’t see what was happening. I couldn’t see that you were so afraid that you didn’t believe that what I felt for you was real.”

Adam didn’t speak, but his breathing was harsh and unsteady, so she knew she was on the right track.

“I need you to know this. I need you to know that I did love you, five years ago. I _loved_ you. There is so much in you that is worthy of love.” She hesitated, blinking back tears. “You are wise, and kind, and you care in a very deep, unselfish way. I’m not saying you’re perfect, but… you are worthy of my love, you proved that to me, and I did love you.”

He was staggered, she could see it in his face. “Why… why are you telling me this?” he croaked.

“I’m not trying to get anything out of it,” Belle said. “You just need to know it. You need to believe it, because it’s true.” She waited.

It was a long time before Adam seemed to be able to put what he was feeling into words; his face was creased, and she thought he might have been fighting tears of his own. At last, he said softly: “Thank you.”

She allowed herself to smile, although she was nearly crying. “I wish I had realised this five years ago,” she said, trying not to sound as broken as she felt. “We could have been together, all this time, if I could have found a way to say this to you then.”

The same thought seemed to be occurring to Adam; he lifted a trembling hand to wipe a stray tear from his cheek. “If only I could have believed it,” he murmured. His head dropped unexpectedly. “My behaviour to you was weak, and shameful,” he said, so quietly that she had to strain to hear him. “Belle, I… I’m sorry. I have been for a long time.”

Before she really knew what was happening, Belle found herself on her feet, crouching in front of him and laying a hand on his knee. “It’s alright,” she said sincerely. It wasn’t really a surprise to find out how much she meant it. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

Slowly, as though he was struggling through treacle to get it there, his hand moved from the sofa cushion, coming to rest on hers. He squeezed her hand briefly. “Thank you,” he said, and he sounded as though he meant it. “Thank you for coming here today, Belle.”

And even though she wasn’t any closer to solving his murder, Belle’s heart felt lighter than it had been in a long, long time as she sat back on her sofa, an unconscious smile on her face, as though a burden she hadn’t even realised she was carrying had been lifted from her back.

Adam didn’t go to work that day, and Belle didn’t go to her interview. Instead, they talked. They talked about their lives, sharing memories, filling the other in on the years that had been missed due to their own stubbornness. Belle talked about her father, her friends, her passions and dreams and ambitions, and Adam listened. He told her about his new family – giving her far more details this time than he had before – and about his work, his beliefs. Afterwards, Belle would have been hard pressed to explain what they had managed to find to discuss that filled so many hours, but it seemed that the words didn’t stop flowing all day long.

They ordered Indian take-away when it got to lunch time, and then pizza when they realised that so many hours had passed that the sky was darkening outside. Although Belle did occasionally attempt to steer the conversation towards any enemies that Adam might have, she was loath to break the trust they were forming today, and besides he said nothing that gave her any alarm, and they had covered most topics. She thought it should have come up, if there was anything there.

Belle started yawning sometime after the pizza had been demolished. She was on the same sofa as Adam now, leaning heavily into the cushions as he poured another cup of tea. She only realised that she had dropped so that her head was against his shoulder when she felt his shaking fingers touch her hair; she was so tired that she could do little more than nuzzle affectionately against his hand.

“What time is it?” she asked sleepily. She could feel him moving behind her as he checked his watch.

“After three,” he said softly. “It’s alright, Belle. Go to sleep. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Belle hoped, desperately, that that was true. She didn’t want to lose this day. She _couldn’t_ lose this day. She found that she was praying, as hard as she could, as she never had before now. She’d saved him, hadn’t she? The day was finished, and he was still alive. Didn’t that mean she could keep this? Keep him?

She sighed, the sound fluttering and light, as her eyes began to close of their own accord. “Adam,” she murmured drowsily.

“Yes, sweetheart?” Oh, it had been a long time since he’d called her that.

“I still love you, you know,” she said.

She felt Adam’s mouth press to her temple, and she thought perhaps he whispered something back, but he was too quiet, and the fire was too warm, and the hour was too late, and Belle was already asleep.


	10. Day 10

There was a moment – brief, and shining – when Belle thought that it might be over. She was warm and comfortable, and she had the sleepy sensation of having had pleasant dreams; it was easy to imagine that Adam might be lying beside her in bed. Then, ever so slowly, she became aware of the _Harry Potter_ theme tune buzzing from the shelf next to the window.

This experience had _ruined_ Harry Potter for her.

Part of her didn’t want to believe it. She’d saved him, hadn’t she? They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, curled up on Adam’s sofa, as though no time had passed at all. He hadn’t died. God, to lose that… It was like breaking her heart all over again.

In spite of herself, however, Belle did understand. Because she hadn’t really saved him; she’d just stopped him from leaving the house. She couldn’t do that forever. She had to find out who it was that wanted to kill him, and find a way to stop them. In a single day.

New determination coursed through her as she swung her legs out of bed. She wasn’t going to achieve anything lying around; it was time to get on with things. She had the oddest sense that she ought to have solved this by now, as though she had been given all the pieces of the jigsaw and had only to put them together to see the completed picture. She was still mulling this over as she went out into the living room, frowning pensively.

Her eyes fell on Ruby. Her best friend, someone who would always be there for her. Maybe that was the key; maybe she needed to recruit some help this time. There were two other people who had offered their assistance, albeit in different versions of the same day. Perhaps with Ruby as well, she could use the help of all her friends to get to the bottom of this.

Mind made up, Belle went to sit next to Ruby on the sofa, gently shaking her shoulder and waiting as her friend mumbled and shifted herself awake.

“Belle?” she groaned, pushing herself up on one arm and looking up at Belle through strands of tangled hair.

“Morning, sunshine,” Belle said, smiling. She got up, moving into the kitchen to get Ruby a glass of water. Ruby accepted it gratefully, drinking a large gulp.

“What time is it?” she asked. Belle looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece.

“Just gone seven,” she said. Ruby groaned loudly, letting her head drop back onto the cushion it had been resting on. Belle added quickly: “I need your help with something.”

That got Ruby’s attention; she lifted her head again, frowning. “Are you alright?” she asked. Belle’s heart swelled; part of her was wondering why it had taken her so long to ask for Ruby’s help before. Her friend might think she was mad when she tried to explain, but she would be there for her regardless. She always was.

“Not really,” she said truthfully. “I need to solve a puzzle.”

It took a hot shower apiece and a cup of coffee before Belle felt ready to face an explanation. Ruby had dressed in her version of formal wear, which was a black Warehouse suit jacket over the top of flared black trousers and her usual red lacy top; she’d tied her hair back in a loose ponytail, and her make-up was minimal. Belle had told her only that she needed to speak to the police; she knew that Ruby’s attire was a way of showing that there was no way Belle was going alone.

Belle herself felt almost underdressed in comparison, in her interview dress. If she ever got through this, she would _burn_ it.

Ruby watched her attentively. “So?” she demanded, when Belle didn’t immediately offer an explanation. “What’s going on, Belle?” she asked in a softer voice.

“It’s hard to explain,” Belle said, but made her best attempt anyway. She told Ruby everything, just as she had Henry and Dorothy: the three people who she trusted the most to help her. Fleetingly she thought of Will; he had always been a loyal friend, but she wasn’t sure he would believe her enough to help her with this.

Ruby listened carefully until Belle had finished speaking, her brow furrowed in concentration. The only sound was of the ticking of the clock, Belle’s voice, and Ruby’s occasional sips from her mug of coffee.

At last, she said simply: “Woah.”

Belle gave a shaky laugh. “Yeah.”

Ruby took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. Belle blinked.

“Okay? You – you believe me?”

Her friend shrugged. “You wouldn’t make this up,” she said. “Maybe you’re going crazy, but fuck it. You don’t seem crazy to me. Why not?”

In spite of herself, Belle realised she was smiling. “I didn’t think it would be that easy,” she said.

“Well, it is,” Ruby said with a grin. “What are friends for?” She put her coffee cup down on the kitchen table. “So what’s the plan?”

Belle really was blessed with an incredible roommate. “I want to gather a team,” she said. “Dorothy Gale – the policewoman – she believed me before, or at least enough to take an interest. Henry believed me. If there are more of us, we might be able to solve this.”

“What about Will?” Ruby asked, voicing the same thought Belle had already had. She pulled a face. “Can’t _believe_ he ended up with that cow Ana.”

“She’s not so bad,” Belle said, remembering Ana’s looser, softer features, her relaxed attitude, the friendliness so different from her behaviour when they had been students.

“If you say so,” Ruby said.

“I’m not sure if he’ll believe me,” Belle admitted. “It’s a lot to ask of anyone, and as far as he’s concerned, he hasn’t seen me in years.”

“I think he’ll surprise you,” Ruby said. “Let’s face it, Belle, if this is true, you need all the help you can get. You don’t have to tell him everything.”

“I might not be able to find him,” Belle pointed out. “I don’t have his number anymore, and he was only in this morning to see Ana.”

“She’ll be able to contact him,” Ruby said confidently. She laughed. “You realise, this will be the proof that you’re telling the truth, right? Because there’s no way you’d have known about them if not. _I_ didn’t even know.”

Belle hadn’t thought of that, but Ruby was already moving to put her coat on before she could comment. It felt so much better already just to have her best friend by her side as she left the flat to catch the bus to the police station.

This time, when she announced her intention to speak to Dorothy at the front desk, she was prepared for the forty-five-minute wait; she pulled a pack of cards out of her handbag, and she and Ruby settled in to play Go Fish while they were waiting. This seemed to attract a lot of attention, and before she knew it, the man with the dog was first giving them tips, and then joining in. It transpired that he was an electro-magnetic engineer having problems with his visa application, although his Texan drawl was so thick that Belle had to ask him to repeat everything at least twice before she understood properly.

At last, Dorothy came for them, and Ruby jumped up beside her as Belle gathered up the cards. “She’s cute,” Ruby whispered as they followed Dorothy down the corridor.

Belle nudged her. “Shh!”

Dorothy was as suspicious as she had been both times that Belle had tried to explain before, although she thought that there being two of them was just a little more convincing. When she told the police officer the facts she had discovered, Ruby seemed just as shocked as Dorothy; she had prewarned her about the tale of Zelena West, but it was no less harrowing to hear regardless. It was close to half past two by the time they had finished, but the end result was positive. Dorothy was on the team.

“I’m not part of your band of Merry Men,” she warned when Belle made the mistake of saying this aloud. She looked swiftly at Ruby. “I’m here to investigate a possible crime. That’s all.”

Belle nodded, and tried to look more serious, but Ruby smiled. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here.” She sounded almost coy.

“I’m not sure _what_ the reason is,” Dorothy muttered, but she allowed them all into her car anyway. Ruby didn’t seem to have any of Belle’s restraint in asking for the sirens, and so they arrived at the university campus at top speed, every car in their path moving aside for them.

Ruby was grinning when they got out of the car. “What’s the plan, Belle?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t I be the one with the plan?” Dorothy asked.

“This is Belle’s dream,” Ruby countered. She winked; Belle blinked in surprise. “Just go with it, Kansas.”

“Kansas?” Dorothy repeated.

“Like the movie?” Ruby said.

Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Like I’ve never heard that one before. Wolfy.”

Ruby giggled.

Belle decided it was time to intervene. “Okay,” she said loudly. Both Dorothy and Ruby looked a little surprised, as though they had forgotten she was there. “I think we should split up.”

Ruby was back at full attention immediately. “Right,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“Ruby, you go to the lab to get Henry,” Belle said. “Dorothy, find Adam in his office. I’ll get Ana to call Will. We’ll all meet in the café.”

Dorothy still looked sceptical, but Ruby saluted smartly. “Aye, aye, captain!” she said. Dorothy’s lips twitched.

Belle set off to find Ana; it wasn’t difficult to find her office, although it was in a different building to Adam’s. She found that she was a little nervous. She hadn’t seen Will today; would Ana be as welcoming without that prelude. She reminded herself that Ana hadn’t know that Belle had met Will the last time. She had been nice anyway. Still, it was difficult to reconcile that with the stuck-up girl she remembered from their university days.

Ana’s door was shut when she approached it; with some trepidation, she raised a hand to knock. After a moment, Ana’s voice invited her inside, and she pushed open the door.

Ana was sitting at her desk wearing a large pair of reading glasses, her blonde hair tied back. She looked up as Belle walked in, and her face split into a wide smile. “Belle? Is that you?”

“Hi, Ana,” Belle said. She was sweating just a little; it made her very nervous to be here. Ana and Will didn’t have the same reason to help her as the others. “How are you?”

They spent a few minutes redoing the same conversation they had had the last time; Belle feigned interest, but she was itching to get to the point. It looked as though Ana knew it too, because she watched Belle with narrowed eyes, and said: “You didn’t come here just to catch up, did you?”

“No,” Belle said truthfully. “I would like to, though, another time.”

Ana smiled. “I’ll hold you to that,” she said. “What do you need?”

To her surprise, Belle realised that she genuinely _liked_ Ana; she wanted to spend more time with her, get to know her. All these years later, she felt that Ana could be a real friend. She said: “It’s difficult to explain, but I really need Will’s help with something.”

“I’ll call him,” Ana said immediately. “We only live around the corner, he can get here really fast. Are you okay, Belle?”

“Not really,” Belle said honestly. “I just… I’m not sure if you’ll believe me if I tell you.”

“Let me call Will,” Ana replied. “Then… try me.”

Belle waited as Ana made the call. She didn’t give many details; she told him that Belle was there to see him, and to meet them at the café. Once she’d ended the call, she looked up at Belle expectantly.

It was a risk, of course; Ana might think she was crazy. Still, she supposed she hadn’t counted on having Will’s help anyway. For what felt like the thousandth time, she launched into her tale, reliving the loneliness and pain of losing Adam time and time again, her desperate need to save him, to find his killer.

Ana didn’t break eye contact the entire time she was talking; her eyes were ice blue and hard as nails. When Belle had finished, she reached out and put a hand on her arm. “We’re with you, Belle,” she said.

“What?” Belle said.

“Look,” Ana said. “I can’t say I believe you, exactly. But you’re Will’s friend, and he cares about you. After everything that happened at university, I’d like you to be my friend too. And if you need something… I may not completely understand what’s going on, but I won’t turn my back on you.”

Belle felt unexpectedly close to tears. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “That means a lot.”

“Good,” Ana said decisively. She grinned mischievously. “Let’s nail the bastard, eh?”

Ruby was waiting with Henry at the café when Belle and Ana got there. They were sitting a little awkwardly at a table with cups of coffee and Danish pastries; Belle remembered belatedly that Ruby had never had as much in common with Henry as she had. She jumped up as Belle reached the table.

“I’ve tried to explain,” she said apologetically. “I don’t think I do it as well as you.”

“Hi, Ruby,” Ana said, a little too loudly. She looked nervous; Ruby had always been more vocal in her dislike when they were students.

Ruby looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Hey,” she said. Then she relaxed. “Are you helping us too?”

Ana smiled. “Yes,” she said simply.

“Awesome,” Ruby said, and she sounded as though she meant it. “Come and sit with us.”

Belle hugged Henry in greeting. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said. “It’s really good to see you.”

“You too,” he said warmly. “Ruby said you were upset about something. Of course I came.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it in a minute, when—” She trailed off, because at that moment, she looked up, and met the gaze of Adam Gold.

“Belle?” he said, his voice stricken with emotion. He was standing next to their table with Dorothy, who looked vaguely guilty; the reason why became apparent when Adam rounded on her. “You didn’t tell me she would be here!”

“Sorry,” Dorothy said awkwardly.

He looked back at Belle. “What’s going on, Belle?”

Belle’s mouth worked, but she couldn’t seem to make any sound come out of it. Unbidden, tears prickled the corners of her eyes. The last time she had seen Adam, he had been holding her in his arms, after hours and hours of conversation and connection. Now, he didn’t even remember it. It was as though it had never been. It was horrible; a tear came sliding down her cheek without her permission as she stared at him.

“Belle?” Henry sounded concerned. “Belle, are you alright? You’re sad.”

Belle dabbed at her eyes. “I… I don’t know,” she whispered. “Adam,” she said hopelessly, because he was still just _standing_ there, with no memory of that beautiful day, of the way they had communicated, resolved some of the issues that had kept them apart in the past.

“ _Adam_ ,” Henry repeated. Belle turned to him in surprise; he sounded almost angry, and when she saw his face, it was knotted with tension.

“Henry?” she said uncertainly.

Adam’s attention flickered over to Henry. “Dr Hyde, isn’t it?” he said smoothly.

“You’re making her unhappy,” Henry spat. Slowly, he reached a hand into his pocket. “After everything you did the last time, _you’re not making her unhappy again_.”

His hand rose above the table, and clasped in it was a gun.

Ruby screamed. Ana’s hands flew to her mouth. Dorothy immediately pulled her own firearm, but there was nothing she could do. Henry’s weapon was trained on Adam’s chest, and at this close range there was nothing anyone could do.

“You?” Belle gasped incredulously. She couldn’t quite make herself understand; it was too much, all happening at once. “All this time, it was _you_?”

Henry looked at her earnestly, although he didn’t lower the gun. Belle’s head was spinning. “I want to protect you, Belle,” he told her, his voice ringing with sincerity. “I’ve always loved you. Not – not in the way you think! I don’t want to be with you. I just want you to be happy. And he… he makes you sad.” His attention turned slowly back to Adam. “He makes you sad,” he repeated in an odd voice.

“Dr Hyde…” Adam began, but Henry didn’t wait. Didn’t listen.

He just pulled the trigger.


	11. Day 11

When Belle woke up the next morning, her ringtone still chiming somewhere in the background, she couldn’t quite bring herself to get up. Instead, she just lay still, clutching the duvet underneath her chin, trying to make sense of what had happened the day before.

Adam had died again; she’d lost count of the number of times she’d seen it happen now. It ought to destroy her, and it still did in one way, but Belle had always been fairly pragmatic, and she’d seen it enough now that it didn’t reduce her to a sobbing wreck anymore. After all, it was a new day: a new chance to get it right.

More shocking was the person who had pulled the trigger: Henry Hyde, her sweet, gentle friend who had listened so earnestly to Belle’s tale and never revealed even the slightest hint that he was the man Belle was looking for. Of course, when she’d told him about it, he hadn’t done it yet, but he must have had the thought in her mind.

Henry. Of all the people she might have suspected – and she _hadn’t_ really suspected anyone, never dreaming it might actually be someone she knew – he would have been the last on her list. He had always been so kind, such a good friend. If only she had realised – but how could she have guessed?

He’d said that he wanted her to be happy; in a way, it was his sweet nature, pushed to an extreme, unhealthy limit, that had done this. Now that she thought back on it, every time Adam had died, she had cried somewhere in public after an interaction with him. If Henry had been watching her – and how horribly disturbing, to think that he could have been – it would have been easy to understand the cause of her distress.

God, he’d been trying to _protect_ her. It was sickening.

Ruby shouted something from the living room; Belle’s alarm was still going off, and reluctantly she got out of bed to turn it off. She needed to come up with another plan. Even though it didn’t feel as though they were really working, every time she worked with intention she came a little closer to solving the problem.

She wasn’t going to solve it today. That much was obvious; there were too many questions to be answered. Belle tried to make as comprehensive a list as she could of all of them as she showered, working her way systematically through all her different repeats of the day and plotting her next move. By the time she was dressed – in her interview outfit again, although only out of habit – she had a plan of sorts.

If she could just work out a few extra things, just today – then tomorrow she might actually save Adam. And if she did that… maybe she would actually get a real tomorrow.

Ruby was awake when she came out into the living room again, making herself a cup of coffee and looking somewhat worse for wear. Belle waved to her as she left. She wished she could do something for Ruby; yesterday, before Henry had revealed himself, she had seemed happier than Belle had seen her in months. But now it was all gone again.

She was pensive on the way to the university, but snapped into focus as soon as she walked onto campus. She was later than usual – the result of her thoughtful lie-in that morning – so she didn’t see Will on the path. That was alright. It wasn’t him she needed to speak to.

This time, Belle didn’t knock on the door of Henry’s laboratory, marching inside with her head held high. He looked up in surprise, nearly dropping the test tube he was holding.

“Belle?” he said. He smiled; Belle felt a curl of something a little like fear and a little like disgust flare in her belly. Could this be the same man who had shot her Adam at point-blank range right in front of her eyes? He looked so _innocent_.

Still, Belle’s father had taught her that there was always more to a person that what initially met the eye, so she managed to smile in return. “Hi, Henry,” she said. His expression faltered a little; perhaps her false cheer was more obvious than she’d thought.

“Are you alright?” he asked her gently. He peeled off his silicone gloves, moving closer to her; Belle instinctively stepped backwards, and Henry stopped, staring at her. “Belle?”

“Henry,” she said, and this time she couldn’t stop the tremors in her voice. “Henry, do you want me to be happy?”

“More than anything,” Henry said immediately, and she was instantly struck by the intensity in his voice. How had she not noticed this before? He was looking at her with a deeply earnest expression in his eyes, although she saw that his hands were clutching the edge of the table and trembling.

She took a deep breath, trying to remind herself that this version of Henry, at least, hadn’t killed anyone. “And if – if you thought I was unhappy,” she said carefully, although she couldn’t prevent her voice from catching. “What… what would you do?”

There was a light dawning in his eyes, as though he understood that there was more that Belle wasn’t saying. “I would do anything,” he said sincerely. “For you, Belle – anything.”

It was fortunate that there was a stool nearby, because Belle’s legs were buckling underneath her; she collapsed into it hastily. “I didn’t realise I meant so much to you,” she said faintly.

Henry dragged another stool over to sit beside her, frowning. “You mean everything to me, Belle,” he said simply. “I’ve never had a friend like you before.”

“Friend?” she repeated weakly. “Just – just a friend?”

His eyes widened. “Nothing more than that, Belle,” he said in surprise, as though the thought had never occurred to him. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. No one has ever understood me the way you do.”

Belle wanted to scream. He hadn’t even seen her in five years! And it was fast becoming clear that she had absolutely failed to understand him at all in all the time she’d known him.

It was difficult not to let her true emotions show on her face; Belle had never been very good at hiding the truth away behind a mask, the way Adam did so frequently. Thinking about Adam sent a pang into her heart. She said: “Was I… Did you think I was happy, back when I was here last?”

“You were,” Henry said hesitantly. His face hardened. “Then you met _him_.”

“Adam?” she said.

“Adam Gold,” Henry agreed. His voice was like iron. “I never liked him, Belle. Never.”

“Because – because you didn’t think I should fall in love with anyone?” Belle asked, her voice trembling.

Henry turned to her sharply, looking shocked. “No! I don’t – why would you say that?”

“I’m just trying to understand,” Belle said softly, her heart leaping in fear. Henry’s eyes softened.

“Of course you are,” he said gently. “You always do. Oh, Belle, if you had fallen in love with a man who made you happy, I would have been so pleased. For a while I wondered if you and Will… But I suppose it wasn’t meant to be.”

“So you weren’t jealous?” Belle asked, nonplussed. She’d thought… Had she got it wrong? She hadn’t believed him when he’d said he wasn’t in love with her, but perhaps he had been telling the truth. There was something else at play here.

“Jealous? No. But you… You’re such a special woman, Belle. You deserved better than him.” Henry didn’t seem to be so much as surprised that she was asking him these questions; it was as though sharing these odd, twisted thoughts was completely natural to him. Belle felt sick.

“You wanted to protect me,” she whispered. It was like the final piece of the puzzle, fitting into place. Henry had never been the jealous spurned lover; that wasn’t his role. He had stood as her protector, her knight, gallantly defending her against threats that only he perceived. Belle felt as though her stomach was made of lead. “Why? What did Adam do?”

Abruptly, Henry smashed his fist into the nearby table top. Belle jumped violently; his face was shaking with anger. “He _never_ appreciated you,” he said. “He was so secretive, so distant. I saw you cry, because of him.” He turned a little, taking in Belle’s shocked face. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, putting a hand on Belle’s arm. It was all she could do not to flinch. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, although it wasn’t. She _had_ cried, back in that relationship with Adam five years ago; they were a couple. They argued, they had issues, but underneath all that, deeper than any of those silly surface things, they had _loved_ one another. She looked up at Henry, another dreadful thought occurring to her. “What did you say to him?”

She waited, hoping she had been wrong. The look in Henry’s suddenly hunted eyes told her that she was not.

“I know I shouldn’t have lied,” he hedged. “But you… I had to look after you, Belle!”

“Okay,” she soothed, because it seemed like he was getting agitated again. “I understand that. Just tell me what you said.”

Henry dropped his head. “I told him you had never loved him,” he said quietly. “I told him you were looking for a diversion to pass the time, and perhaps an improvement on your grades.”

Belle shut her eyes, feeling the tears leaking out between the lashes. So that had been it: the reason Adam had shut her out, the reason he had told her to leave. It had all been Henry, all along, telling lies on her behalf, coming between them. Even now, even so many years later, so many deaths and truths and repeated days, it was a crack in her heart to hear it.

“He believed me!” Henry burst out desperately, obviously seeing how distressed she was. “Belle, it took almost _no_ persuasion. How could he love you, if he could abandon you so quickly? He didn’t even _question_ what I was saying to him!”

“He believed he wasn’t worthy of me already,” Belle said thickly. It would be so easy to blame Adam for doubting her so easily; if he had only told her what Henry had said, if he had only trusted in their love, if she had only stayed, only listened, only asked… She could go around and around in circles, and in the end, what did it matter? They had been divided, and they had suffered.

“He wasn’t,” Henry said with certainty.

“Henry,” Belle said. “If I asked you to, would you get help?”

He blinked at the sudden change in subject. “What?”

“Would you go to the police, and tell them everything?” she asked. “Tell them that you have a gun, that you’re ready to kill Adam for hurting me?”

His head tipped to one side. “How do you know that?” he said.

Belle leaned forward, daring to take his hands. “I know _you_ , Henry,” she said earnestly. She took a gamble. “No one knows you better than I do.”

“If you asked…” he said slowly. He sighed, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “If you asked, Belle, I would do anything for you.”

In that moment, despite everything, she felt an odd rush of affection for this strange little man who had done so many terrible things out of love for her. She bent her head impulsively and kissed the back of his hand. “I have some things I need to do before tomorrow, Henry,” she said.

“I can help you,” he offered hesitantly. She smiled up at him.

“That’s what I was hoping.”


	12. Day 12

The first chiming notes of the _Harry Potter_ theme tune began to play, and Belle’s eyes flew open as though they had just been waiting for the sound.

She didn’t feel tired. She felt energised, useful; she could feel it singing through her veins. Today was the day. She was going to save Adam today. She was going to fix _everything_ today.

Working with Henry had been chilling, in many ways; spending time with someone she knew had the potential to murder in his heart, yet hadn’t acted on it in the reality she was in. However, she couldn’t deny he was brilliant. He had helped enormously with her plans, seemingly willing to do anything if she said it would make her happy. He seemed so… _benign_ , that it was impossible to imagine him doing anything so terrible. Or at least it would be, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

She swung herself abruptly out of bed, not wanting to think about it. Just picturing the transfixed, horrified expression on Adam’s face as Henry pulled the trigger, as he pitched forwards and collapsed at her feet, made her feel sick.

She showered and dressed in her interview outfit in record time, making a cup of coffee and bringing it to Ruby on the couch. Her friend mumbled her gratitude through her tangled hair as she sipped the coffee.

“Get some rest, Ruby,” Belle said. “We’re having a party tonight.”

Ruby frowned blearily, taking a large gulp from her mug and then gasping at its heat. “We are?”

“Yes,” Belle said firmly. “We’re going to celebrate.”

“Your interview?” Ruby asked, her eyes lighting in understanding. Belle was hoping that there would be a lot more to celebrate that day, but she didn’t say anything. She just nodded firmly.

It didn’t feel cold at all when Belle stepped out into the street. Her breath misted in the air in front of her face, and she had to be careful where she walked so that her high heels didn’t skid on the icy pavement, but her cheeks felt warm. For the first time, she was completely confident. How could she fail? Henry himself had ensured that her plan was airtight. She didn’t think many people would be able to say that they’d managed to enlist their enemy into plotting their own take-down.

Not that Henry really felt like her enemy. Although one part of her couldn’t help but hate him for killing Adam so many times, another part of her felt desperately sorry for him. She knew that everything he had done, no matter how misplaced, had been out of love. There was no hatred in him, no malice. Just some misguided sense of protection and duty.

She tried not to think about it too much on the bus ride into the university, just watching people going by, living their lives. She had the oddest sense that today was her last day, no matter what; she’d been given a finite number of days to right this wrong, and even if she failed today, she thought it might stick. She couldn’t say why she thought so, and there was nothing to back it up, but if she was right, it was even more important that she succeed.

She walked onto campus with a smile, waiting for Will’s familiar tones. She longed for him to remember her properly, for the days to separate as they should once more.

“That’s never Belle French.”

Without bothering to reply, she launched herself into his arms, letting herself sink into his embrace. It was warm, comfortable, and just what she needed after the efforts of the last few days. In typical Will fashion, he didn’t question her, but just hugged her back.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said sincerely.

His voice muffled in her hair, he said: “You too.” He sounded surprised, but pleased. “What are you doing here?”

Belle pulled back from him. “I have an interview at the library,” she said. “I’m glad I ran into you, though. Ruby and I are having a party tonight. I want you and Ana to come.”

He frowned at her. “How did you know about me and Ana?”

She bit her lip, annoyed at herself for the slip. “I heard it around,” she said, sounding unconvincing to her own ears, but Will didn’t seem to have noticed anything.

“Ruined the surprise,” he said cheerfully. “What time do you want us?”

“Seven,” she told him firmly. “I’ll text you the address if you give me your number.”

He did give her his number, and they parted. Belle was bound for the laboratory, although she couldn’t help but throw a forlorn glance towards the café. She would miss seeing Adam, but it couldn’t be helped. If everything went according to plan, she would see him a little later; she couldn’t risk meeting him now, and having Henry see them together. He was in such an unstable state that he could misconstrue anything.

It was difficult, walking into the laboratory as though nothing was the matter, putting her arms around Henry as though she was genuinely happy to see him, but it was necessary. She had to make sure he didn’t do anything rash until she had time to secure him properly, and so she set up a time to meet him for an early lunch. She lingered long enough that Adam would be long gone by the time she came out of the science building, Henry’s number freshly programmed into her phone next to Will’s.

Belle was going to do something she hadn’t done in a long time, something that she had wrestled with when making her plans, on the grounds that she couldn’t risk Adam’s life over so trivial a thing. In the end, however, she had reasoned that if this day _was_ the one that stuck, she would regret missing it.

She was going to her interview.

She knew all the questions. She had practised her answers with Henry the day before until she was word-perfect, although he had warned her not to sound too coached. She wanted this job, wanted to stay involved with the thriving university life that all her friends were connected to, and this interview would be the way to do it. Adam was safe in his office by now, and as long as she stayed away from him, Henry wouldn’t bother him.

Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel a little _selfish_ as she followed the library receptionist into the interview room and shook hands with Alexandra Greenlowe and Harold Pierce. She kept trying to remind herself that taking an hour off from this day to do something just for herself wasn’t the end of the world, but how could she know for sure? She was here now, anyway, so she had to put it out of her mind.

She could tell they were impressed by her ready answers and easy attitude. Harold Pierce was beaming at her by the time the interview wrapped up, and even severe Alexandra had a tiny smile in the corner of her mouth. It was a relief to see herself out, striding quickly across campus towards the café where she was meeting Henry.

She had memorised Adam’s office number for this very reason; she had known she’d be worrying, wondering whether or not her gamble had paid off. She’d had Henry test her on it. Swiftly, she keyed it into her phone, listened to it ring with her heart in her mouth.

“Hello?” His voice, his lovely, gentle, smooth voice, alive and well at the other end of the phone! Even as she listened to it, she could see Henry walking towards her from the science building. She had done it; Adam was safe.

She hung up the phone without answering him. She couldn’t risk him hearing her voice, questioning her; firstly, it might throw a spanner in her plans, and secondly, it would test her own willpower too much. It was already nearly impossible not to respond to him.

Henry was already waiting outside the café when she arrived; he held up a sandwich in his hand as she approached. “I know you said we needed to go somewhere else, but I thought you might be hungry.”

Once upon a time, that kind of thoughtful behaviour would have made Belle feel touched; now, it made her shudder. She accepted the sandwich without comment, although threw Henry a half-hearted smile in response to his bewildered frown.

He fell into step with her as she began to walk across campus. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Henry,” she said gently. “You’re a good friend, and I care about you, but right now I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

His face relaxed into an easy, open expression. “Of course, Belle,” he said simply.

Her heart ached. “Would you do something for me if I asked, even if it’s hard for you?”

Not for the first time, Henry said: “I’d do anything for you, Belle.”

“Good,” she said determinedly. “Henry, we’re going to the police.”

His eyes widened. “The police?” He stopped in his tracks. “Why?” For the first time, his voice was guarded.

She stopped with him, turning in the middle of the chilly university grounds to look at him. He looked lost, vulnerable, just the same gentle friend he’d always been when they were students together. “Henry,” she said softly. “I know you care for me. I – I do appreciate it. But you’re not well, and you need help.”

His eyes were wide and trusting. “I do?”

Belle nodded. “I know you have a gun you’re not supposed to, Henry,” she said. Ignoring his shocked expression, she pressed: “I know you sometimes dream of using it… Turning it on anyone who hurts me, just to make sure they never do it again. Protecting me.”

“Belle…” His voice was a whisper.

“I care about you too much to let it go on,” she said. “It’s not right, it’s not _healthy_ , and I want to help you. Please, Henry, let me help you.”

She waited, her heart beating in time to tick the seconds and minutes away, as he stared at her, his eyes travelling over her face. This was it, really; the moment she’d been building towards through all these days. If he listened to her now, if he believed her, if the protective love towards her he was harbouring was strong enough, then she had a real chance to save Adam. But if not…

Henry’s face was ashen and pale. He licked his lips nervously. “Belle,” he said, his voice quiet. “I never wanted to frighten you. I just—” He broke off, his head dropping forward.

“I know,” she said. “I understand. Please, Henry, just come with me. Tell them everything, for me.”

Now he looked up at her. “I told you I’d do anything for me, Belle,” he said softly. He held up his head just a little straighter. “I meant it.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have done it; perhaps she ought to have felt more afraid. But in that moment, Belle could only feel pure affection and love for her friend, no matter what he had done in the many versions of the day. She flung her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered.

They chatted about ordinary things, on the way to the police station. Belle didn’t want to run the risk of Henry spooking and changing his mind, and it was surprisingly easy to forget everything else and just talk to him the way they always had. She thought that he seemed just a little relieved that she was behaving so normally around him; despite everything, she didn’t want to abandon him. He was her friend, and he was clearly unwell. She wanted to help him.

It was a good thing that they were able to talk so easily, because they faced another long wait at the police station after Belle asked for Dorothy. She didn’t allow it to worry her, and she and Henry played cards with the tattooed man for forty minutes until the door finally opened, and Dorothy called Henry’s name.

He stood up, looking nervously back at Belle; she smiled encouragingly at him. “Just tell her everything we talked about,” she said. “I trust you, Henry. I’ll still be here for you. I’m so happy you’re doing this.”

The wait was _agonising_. Henry was gone for almost two hours; Belle could feel the day sliding away, as she played cards and read the book she had stashed in her handbag by turns. The man with the tattoos was finally seen by a police officer, and Belle was left alone, plagued by doubts.

What if Henry changed his mind about telling the truth? What if Dorothy didn’t believe him? There were so many things that could go wrong, and yet she had planned so carefully that she didn’t think there was anything else she could have done to ensure a positive outcome. She had spoken to Henry at great lengths about his motivations, trying to gauge the best way of getting through to him. Now, she could only sit here and hope.

When the door opened again, Dorothy was alone, her face grave. Belle’s heart leapt with nerves; Dorothy looked at her. “Miss French?”

She jumped up at once. “Yes?”

Dorothy sighed. “Your friend has been taken into protective custody,” she said. She looked around; clearly seeing that the hall was empty, she went on: “It’s likely that he’ll be remanded to a psychiatric facility. He’s in the custody of a corrective officer at the moment.”

The relief had her practically doubled over. “Oh, thank God,” she breathed. Dorothy looked concerned; she put a tentative hand on Belle’s shoulder.

“You must have been very worried for him,” she said uncertainly.

“I was frightened,” Belle said bluntly. “He was threatening towards my ex-boyfriend. I thought he would kill him.” She neglected to mention that in some realities, he actually _had_ killed him.

“Would that be Adam?” Dorothy asked. “He mentioned him in a manner that I can understand would be somewhat disturbing to you.”

“Thank you,” Belle said sincerely. “Thank you for helping him. He’s a good person underneath it all. He just needs help.”

“He’ll get it,” Dorothy said. “I’m sure his family will keep you notified.” She hesitated. “Miss French—”

“Belle,” Belle interrupted.

“Belle,” Dorothy conceded. “Why did you ask for me specifically?” Belle couldn’t help but smile at the forthright manner of the question.

She feigned surprise. “Because we’ve met before,” she said, only feeling the slightest pang of guilt at the lie. “You stopped someone putting something into my drink at a bar. _Haywire_ , I think it was called?” A long conversation with a deeply mistrustful Dorothy the day before had elicited this information; Belle didn’t like adopting a story that had happened to someone else, but she hadn’t been able to think of anything else more convincing. “You were off-duty, and he ran away anyway, but you were kind to me. I knew I could trust you.” She smiled, and then added something totally unnecessary to anything but her own match-making purposes. “I remember because I was with my friend Ruby, and she told me how cute she thought you were.”

Dorothy surprised Belle by blushing. “Oh,” she said a little awkwardly. She swallowed. “I remember _Haywire_ ,” she said. She looked a little uncomfortable. “I don’t remember your friend Ruby.”

This was such a perfect opening that Belle couldn’t resist. “I know this is unorthodox,” she said hesitantly, “but would you like to meet her again? I’m so grateful to you for everything you’ve done for Henry. We’re having some friends over tonight for a little party. It would be lovely to have you there too.”

Perhaps it was the oddness of the whole situation. Perhaps it was the sense that in some reality, they already knew each other. Dorothy was a police officer; her alarm bells should have been ringing at this odd request. But somehow, she just shrugged, and said: “Alright.”

It was after six in the evening by the time Belle left Dorothy, having given her the address of the flat so that she could come to the party after she’d changed. She texted Ruby, reminding her that there were people coming in an hour or so; she texted Will to remind him where she lived. She’d helped Henry. She’d saved Adam’s life. Now there was just one more thing she wanted to do before she went home.

She reached Adam’s house at twenty past six, her heart hammering as she walked up the short pathway to his front door. Not pausing to let herself think about it, she reached up and knocked on the door.

There was a short pause; she could hear the tapping of his cane on the wooden floorboards as he came to answer it. He wouldn’t know it was her. She had no idea how he’d react.

The door swung open, and there he was.

For a moment, Belle just let herself look at him. He was so _beautiful_ , so warm and lovely and alive. She had saved him. Regardless of how this conversation went, she had _saved_ him.

Adam stared at her, slack-jawed. “Belle?” he whispered.

She’d had a speech prepared in her mind. She was going to explain – oh, so many things! She was going to persuade him to give her another opportunity with him. There was so much she wanted to do.

But in that moment, looking into his soft gaze, she didn’t want to waste any time. They had already lost so much.

“I love you,” she said, and before he could do anything more than blink in shock, she kissed him.

His mouth was warm and pliant on hers, and she found her arms wrapping themselves around his neck, her fingers burying themselves into the hair at the base of his neck. For a moment, he was frozen in her embrace, and then suddenly he moved beneath her with a soft, heart-wrenching _moan_ that shuddered through to Belle’s very core. His hand crept around her waist, and she clutched him tighter as his lips pressed against hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth.

She didn’t know how long they stood on his doorstep, kissing and holding each other, electricity running over her skin as his fingers brushed her cheek, the line of her jaw. At last, she found herself buried in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder, as he stroked her hair over and over again as though marvelling over the return of something precious he had thought long lost.

“I love you,” she murmured. “I’ve always loved you, Adam.” Her voice broke a little. “Henry told me what he said to you, all those years ago. It was never true. I loved you then and I love you now. You’re _everything_ to me. I love you.” She knew she was rambling, somewhat, but he needed to understand. She had to make him understand.

“Oh, Belle,” he said softly. He pressed his lips to her temple. “Oh, sweetheart.”

She withdrew a little, just so she could look into his eyes. “Do you believe me?”

His arm tightened around her waist momentarily. “I should never have let you go.” That wasn’t an answer, not really, but then it had only been a singular day. There would be time for all of it to resolve. There would be time for him to believe her.

“Come to a party with me,” she said.

Adam blinked at her. “What?”

“Not a big one,” she said hastily. “Just Ruby, Will, Ana and Dorothy.”

“Dorothy?” he repeated.

“A new friend,” she said truthfully. She reached up to stroke his face. “So much has happened, Adam,” she said. “I know it’s not going to be resolved in a day.” Oh, the irony of saying that, when she’d been trying so hard to resolve _everything_ in a single day! “But right now, I’m here, and I want to be with you. Come to the party. Be with me. And the rest…”

Carefully, Adam tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. “The rest?” he queried gently.

Belle smiled. “We’ll work it out tomorrow.”

 

 

**FIN**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOAH, at last I got it all out! Beauty_in_gold, you've been so patient with me, and I've been so terribly delayed, but I hope this 26k monster might make up for it a little bit! I hope it meets your prompt and you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> As always, I am an attention-whore and live for comments, kudos and concric! Hit me up on tumblr at 13callieb.tumblr.com.


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